i 


! 


DONN/ 


illl 


illttlltiti!   I 


F:MAR: 
GRA\VFORD 


I! 


THE   PRIMADONNA 


THE 

PRIMADONNA 

A  SEQUEL  TO  "FAIR  MARGARET" 


BY 
F.  MARION   CRAWFORD 

AUTHOR  OP  "  SARACINESCA,"  "  SANT'  ILARIO," 


gorfc 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:    MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 

1908 

All  rights  reserved 


CHAPTER  I 

WHEN  the  accident  happened,  Cordova  was  singing 
the  mad  scene  in  Lucia  for  the  last  time  in  that  season, 
and  she  had  never  sung  it  better.  The  Bride  of  Lam- 
mermoor  is  the  greatest  love-story  ever  written,  and  it 
was  nothing  short  of  desecration  to  make  a  libretto  of 
it;  but  so  far  as  the  last  act  is  concerned  the  opera  cer 
tainly  conveys  the  impression  that  the  heroine  is  a 
raving  lunatic.  Only  a  crazy  woman  could  express 
feeling  in  such  an  unusual  way. 

Cordova's  face  was  nothing  but  a  mask  of  powder, 
in  which  her  handsome  brown  eyes  would  have  looked 
like  two  holes  if  she  had  not  kept  them  half  shut  xmder 
the  heavily  whitened  lids;  her  hands  were  chalked  too, 
and  they  were  like  plaster  casts  of  hands,  cleverly 
jointed  at  the  wrists.  She  wore  a  garment  which  was 
supposed  to  be  a  nightdress,  which  resembled  a  very 
expensive  modern  shroud,  and  which  was  evidently 
put  on  over  a  good  many  other  things.  There  was  a 
deal  of  lace  on  it,  which  fluttered  when  she  made  her 
hands  shake  to  accompany  each  trill,  and  all  this  really 
contributed  to  the  general  impression  of  insanity. 
Possibly  it  was  overdone;  but  if  any  one  in  the  audience 
had  seen  such  a  young  person  enter  his  or  her  room 
unexpectedly,  and  uttering  such  unaccountable  sounds, 


2  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

he  or  she  would  most  assuredly  have  rung  for  a  doctor 
and  a  cftb;  e-nci  foi  Ft  strait-jacked  if  such  a  thing  were 
to  be  had  hi  the  neighbourhood. 

An  elderly  man,  with  very  marked  features  and 
iron-grey  hair,  sat  in  the  fifth  row  of  the  stalls,  on 
the  right-hand  aisle.  He  was  a  bony  man,  and  the 
people  behind  him  noticed  him  and  thought  he  looked 
strong.  He  had  heard  Bonanni  hi  her  best  days  and 
many  great  lyric  sopranos  from  Patti  to  Melba,  and  he 
was  thinking  that  none  of  them  had  sung  the  mad  scene 
better  than  Cordova,  who  had  only  been  on  the  stage 
two  years,  and  was  now  in  New  York  for  the  first  time. 
But  he  had  already  heard  her  in  London  and  Paris, 
and  he  knew  her.  He  had  first  met  her  at  a  breakfast 
on  board  Logotheti's  yacht  at  Cap  Martin.  Logotheti 
was  a  young  Greek  financier  who  lived  in  Paris  and 
wanted  to  marry  her.  He  was  rather  mad,  and  had 
tried  to  carry  her  off  on  the  night  of  the  dress  rehearsal 
before  her  debut,  but  had  somehow  got  himself  locked 
up  for  somebody  else.  Since  then  he  had  grown  calmer, 
but  he  still  worshipped  at  the  shrine  of  the  Cordova. 
He  was  not  the  only  one,  however;  there  were  several, 
including  the  very  distinguished  English  man  of  letters, 
Edmund  Lushington,  who  had  known  her  before  she 
had  begun  to  sing  on  the  stage. 

But  Lushington  was  in  England  and  Logotheti  was 
in  Paris,  and  on  the  night  of  the  accident  Cordova  had 
not  many  acquaintances  in  the  house  besides  the  bony 
man  with  grey  hair;  for  though  society  had  been  anxious 
to  feed  her  and  get  her  to  sing  for  nothing,  and  to  play 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  3 

bridge  with  her,  she  had  never  been  inclined  to  accept 
those  attentions.  Society  in  New  York  claimed  her, 
on  the  ground  that  she  was  a  lady  and  was  an  American 
on  her  mother's  side.  Yet  she  insisted  on  calling  her 
self  a  professional,  because  singing  was  her  profession, 
and  society  thought  this  so  strange  that  it  at  once  be 
came  suspicious  and  invented  wild  and  unedifying 
stories  about  her;  and  the  reporters  haunted  the  lobby 
of  her  hotel,  and  gossiped  with  their  friends  the  detec 
tives,  who  also  spent  much  time  there  in  a  professional 
way  for  the  general  good,  and  were  generally  what 
English  workmen  call  wet  smokers. 

Cordova  herself  was  altogether  intent  on  what  she 
was  doing  and  was  not  thinking  of  her  friends,  of  Lush- 
ington,  or  Logo  the  ti,  nor  of  the  bony  man  in  the  stalls; 
certainly  not  of  society,  though  it  was  richly  represented 
by  diamonds  in  the  subscriber's  tier.  Indeed  the 
jewellery  was  so  plentiful  and  of  such  expensive  quality 
that  the  whole  row  of  boxes  shone  like  a  vast  coronet 
set  with  thousands  of  precious  stones.  When  the  music 
did  not  amuse  society,  the  diamonds  and  rubies  twinkled 
and  glittered  uneasily,  but  when  Cordova  was  trilling 
her  wildest  they  were  quite  still  and  blazed  with  a  steady 
light.  Afterwards  the  audience  would  all  say  again 
what  they  had  always  said  about  every  great  lyric 
soprano,  that  it  was  just  a  wonderful  instrument  with 
out  a  particle  of  feeling,  that  it  was  an  over-grown 
canary,  a  human  flute,  and  all  the  rest  of  it;  but  while 
the  trills  ran  on  the  people  listened  in  wonder  and  the 
diamonds  were  very  quiet. 


4  THE   PKIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

e A-a A-a A-a A-a '  sang  Cordova 

at  an  inconceivable  pitch. 

A  terrific  explosion  shook  the  building  to  its  founda 
tions;  the  lights  went  out,  and  there  was  a  long  grinding 
crash  of  broken  glass  not  far  off. 

In  the  momentary  silence  that  followed  before  the 
inevitable  panic  the  voice  of  Schreiermeyer,  the  mana 
ger,  rang  out  through  the  darkness. 

' Ladies  and  gentlemen!  There's  no  danger!  Keep 
your  seats!  The  lights  will  be  up  directly.' 

And  indeed  the  little  red  lamps  over  each  door  that 
led  out,  being  on  another  circuit,  were  all  burning 
quietly,  but  in  the  first  moment  of  fright  no  one  noticed 
them,  and  the  house  seemed  to  be  quite  dark. 

Then  the  whole  mass  of  humanity  began  to  writhe 
and  swell,  as  a  frightened  crowd  does  in  the  dark,  so 
that  every  one  feels  as  if  all  the  other  people  were  grow 
ing  hugely  big,  as  big  as  elephants,  to  smother  and 
crush  him;  and  each  man  makes  himself  as  broad  as  he 
can,  and  tries  to  swell  out  his  chest,  and  squares  his 
elbows  to  keep  the  weight  off  his  sides;  and  with  the 
steady  strain  and  effort  every  one  breathes  hard,  and 
few  speak,  and  the  hard-drawn  breath  of  thousands  to 
gether  makes  a  sound  of  rushing  wind  like  bellows 
as  enormous  as  houses,  blowing  steadily  in  the  dark 
ness. 

'Keep  your  seats!'  yelled  Schreiermeyer  desperately. 

He  had  been  in  many  accidents,  and  understood  the 
meaning  of  the  noises  he  heard.  There  was  death  in 
them,  death  for  the  weak  by  squeezing,  and  smothering, 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  5 

and  trampling  underfoot.  It  was  a  grim  moment, 
and  no  one  who  was  there  has  forgotten  it,  the  manager 
least  of  all. 

'It's  only  a  fuse  gone!'  he  shouted.  'Only  a  plug 
burnt  out!' 

But  the  terrified  throng  did  not  believe,  and  the 
people  pressed  upon  each  other  with  the  weight  of 
hundreds  of  bodies,  thronging  from  behind,  towards 
the  little  red  lights.  There  were  groans  now,  besides 
the  strained  breathing  and  the  soft  shuffling  of  many 
feet  on  the  thick  carpets.  Each  time  some  one  went 
down  there  was  a  groan,  stifled  as  instantly  and  surely 
as  though  the  lips  from  which  it  came  were  quickly 
thrust  under  water. 

Schreiermeyer  knew  well  enough  that  if  nothing 
could  be  done  within  the  next  two  minutes  there  would 
be  an  awful  catastrophe;  but  he  was  helpless.  No 
doubt  the  electricians  were  at  work;  in  ten  minutes  the 
damage  would  be  repaired  and  the  lights  would  be  up 
again;  but  the  house  would  be  empty  then,  except  for 
the  dead  and  the  dying. 

Another  groan  was  heard,  and  another  quickly  after 
it.  The  wretched  manager  yelled,  stormed,  stamped, 
entreated,  and  promised,  but  with  no  effect.  In  the 
very  faint  red  light  from  the  doors  he  saw  a  moving  sea 
of  black  and  heard  it  surging  to  his  very  feet.  He  had 
an  old  professional's  exact  sense  of  passing  time,  and  he 
knew  that  a  full  minute  had  already  gone  by  since  the 
explosion.  No  one  could  be  dead  yet,  even  in  that  press, 
but  there  were  few  seconds  to  spare,  fewer  and  fewer. 


6  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

Then  another  sound  was  heard,  a  very  pure  strong 
note,  high  above  his  own  tones,  a  beautiful  round  note, 
that  made  one  think  of  gold  and  silver  bells,  and  that 
filled  the  house  instantly,  like  light,  and  reached  every 
ear,  even  through  the  terror  that  was  driving  the  crowd 
mad  in  the  dark. 

A  moment  more,  an  instant's  pause,  and  Cordova 
had  begun  Lucia's  song  again  at  the  beginning,  and  her 
marvellous  trills  and  staccato  notes,  and  trills  again, 
trills  upon  trills  without  end,  filled  the  vast  darkness 
and  stopped  those  four  thousand  men  and  women,  spell 
bound  and  silent,  and  ashamed  too. 

It  was  not  great  music,  surely;  but  it  was  sung  by 
the  greatest  living  singer,  singing  alone  in  the  dark,  as 
calmly  and  as  perfectly  as  if  all  the  orchestra  had  been 
with  her,  singing  as  no  one  can  who  feels  the  least  tremor 
of  fear;  and  the  awful  tension  of  the  dark  throng  relaxed, 
and  the  breath  that  came  was  a  great  sigh  of  relief,  for 
it  was  not  possible  to  be  frightened  when  a  fearless 
woman  was  singing  so  marvellously. 

Then,  still  in  the  dark,  some  of  the  musicians  struck 
in  and  supported  her,  and  others  followed,  till  the  whole 
body  of  harmony  was  complete;  and  just  as  she  was  at 
the  wildest  trills,  at  the  very  passage  during  which  the 
crash  had  come,  the  lights  went  up  all  at  once;  and  there 
stood  Cordova  in  white  and  lace,  with  her  eyes  half  shut 
and  shaking  her  outstretched  hands  as  she  always 
made  them  shake  in  the  mad  scene;  and  the  stage  was 
just  as  it  had  been  before  the  accident,  except  that 
Schreiermeyer  was  standing  near  the  singer  in  evening 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  7 

dress  with  a  perfectly  new  and  shiny  high  hat  on  the 
back  of  his  head,  and  his  mouth  wide  open. 

The  people  were  half  hysterical  from  the  past  danger, 
and  when  they  saw,  and  realised,  they  did  not  wait  for 
the  end  of  the  air,  but  sent  up  such  a  shout  of  applause 
as  had  never  been  heard  in  the  Opera  before  and  may 
not  be  heard  there  again. 

Instinctively  the  Primadonna  sang  the  last  bars, 
though  no  one  heard  her  in  the  din,  unless  it  was  Schreier- 
meyer,  who  stood  near  her.  When  she  had  finished  at 
last  he  ran  up  to  her  and  threw  both  his  arms  round 
her  in  a  paroxysm  of  gratitude,  regardless  of  her  powder 
and  chalk,  which  came  off  upon  his  coat  and  yellow 
beard  in  patches  of  white  as  he  kissed  her  on  both 
cheeks,  calling  her  by  every  endearing  name  that 
occurred  to  his  polyglot  memory,  from  Sweetheart  hi 
English  to  Little  Cabbage  in  French,  till  Cordova 
laughed  and  pushed  him  away,  and  made  a  tremendous 
courtesy  to  the  audience. 

Just  then  a  man  in  a  blue  jacket  and  gilt  buttons 
entered  from  the  left  of  the  stage  and  whispered  a  few 
words  into  Schreiermeyer's  ear.  The  manager  looked 
grave  at  once,  nodded  and  came  forward  to  the  promp 
ter's  box.  The  man  had  brought  news  of  the  accident, 
he  said;  a  quantity  of  dynamite  which  was  to  have  been 
used  in  subterranean  blasting  had  exploded  and  had 
done  great  damage,  no  one  yet  knew  how  great.  It 
was  probable  that  many  persons  had  been  killed. 

But  for  this  news,  Cordova  would  have  had  one  of 
those  ovations  which  rarely  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  but 


8  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  i 

famous  singers,  for  there  was  not  a  man  or  woman  in 
the  theatre  who  had  not  felt  that  she  had  averted  a 
catastrophe  and  saved  scores  of  lives.  As  it  was, 
several  women  had  been  slightly  hurt  and  at  least  fifty 
had  faulted.  Every  one  was  anxious  to  help  them 
now;  most  of  all  the  very  people  who  had  hurt  them. 

But  the  news  of  an  accident  in  the  city  emptied  the 
house  in  a  few  minutes;  even  now  that  the  lights  were 
up  the  anxiety  to  get  out  to  the  street  and  to  know 
more  of  the  truth  was  great  enough  to  be  dangerous, 
and  the  strong  crowd  heaved  and  surged  again  and 
pushed  through  the  many  doors  with  little  thought  for 
the  weak  or  for  any  who  had  been  injured  in  the  first 
panic. 

But  in  the  meantime  Cordova  had  reached  her  dress 
ing-room,  supported  by  the  enthusiastic  Schreiermeyer 
on  one  side,  and  by  the  equally  enthusiastic  tenor  on 
the  other,  while  the  singular  family  party  assembled  in 
the  last  act  of  Lucia  di  Lammermoor  brought  up  the  rear 
with  many  expressions  of  admiration  and  sympathy. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Primadonna  needed  neither 
sympathy  nor  support,  and  that  sort  of  admiration  was 
not  of  the  kind  that  most  delighted  her.  She  did  not 
believe  that  she  had  done  anything  heroic,  and  did  not 
feel  at  all  inclined  to  cry. 

'You  saved  the  whole  audience!'  cried  Signer  Pompeo 
Stromboli,  the  great  Italian  tenor,  who  presented  an 
amazing  appearance  in  his  Highland  dress.  'Four 
thousand  seven  hundred  and  fifty-three  people  owe 
you  then-  lives  at  this  moment!  Every  one  of  them 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  9 

would  have  been  dead  but  for  your  superb  coolness! 
Ah,  you  are  indeed  a  great  woman!' 

Schreiermeyer's  business  ear  had  caught  the  figures. 
As  they  walked,  each  with  an  arm  through  one  of  the 
Primadonna's,  he  leaned  back  and  spoke  to  Stromboli 
behind  her  head. 

'How  the  devil  do  you  know  what  the  house  was?' 
he  asked  sharply. 

'I  always  know/  answered  the  Italian  in  a  perfectly 
matter-of-fact  tone.  'My  dresser  finds  out  from  the 
box-office.  I  never  take  the  C  sharp  if  there  are  less 
than  three  thousand.' 

'I'll  stop  that!'  growled  Schreiermeyer. 

'As  you  please!'  Stromboli  shrugged  his  massive 
shoulders.  'C  sharp  is  not  in  the  engagement!' 

'It  shal)  be  in  the  next!    I  won't  sign  without  it!' 

'I  won't  sign  at  all!'  retorted  the  tenor  with  a  sneer 
of  superiority.  'You  need  not  talk  of  conditions,  for 
I  shall  not  come  to  America  again!' 

'Oh,  do  stop  quarrelling!'  laughed  Cordova  as  they 
reached  the  door  of  her  box,  for  she  had  heard  similar 
amenities  exchanged  twenty  times  already,  and  she 
knew  that  they  meant  nothing  at  all  on  either  side. 

'Have  you  any  beer?'  inquired  Strcmboli  of  the 
Primadonna,  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 

'Bring  some  beer,  Bob!'  Schreiermeyer  called  out 
over  his  shoulder  to  some  one  hi  the  distance. 

'Yes,  sir,'  answered  a  rough  voice,  far  off,  and  with 
a  foreign  accent. 

The  three  entered  the  Primadonna's  dressing-room 


10  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

together.  It  was  a  hideous  place,  as  all  dressing-rooms 
are  which  are  never  used  two  days  in  succession  by  the 
same  actress  or  singer;  very  different  from  the  pretty 
cells  in  the  beehive  of  the  Comedie  Frangaise  where 
each  pensioner  or  shareholder  is  lodged  like  a  queen  bee 
by  herself,  for  years  at  a  time. 

The  walls  of  Cordova's  dressing-room  were  more 
or  less  white-washed  where  the  plaster  had  not  been 
damaged.  There  was  a  dingy  full-length  mirror,  a 
shabby  toilet-table;  there  were  a  few  crazy  chairs, 
the  wretched  furniture  which  is  generally  to  be  found 
in  actresses'  dressing-rooms,  notwithstanding  the  mar 
vellous  descriptions  invented  by  romancers.  But  there 
was  light  in  abundance  and  to  excess,  dazzling,  unshaded, 
intolerable  to  any  but  theatrical  eyes.  There  were  at 
least  twenty  strong  electric  lamps  in  the  miserable 
place,  which  illuminated  the  coarsely  painted  faces  of 
the  Primadonna  and  the  tenor  with  alarming  distinct 
ness,  and  gleamed  on  Schreiermeyer's  smooth  fair  hair 
and  beard,  and  impassive  features. 

'You'll  have  two  columns  and  a  portrait  in  every 
paper  to-morrow,7  he  observed  thoughtfully.  'It's 
worth  while  to  engage  such  people.  Oh  yes,  damn  it, 
I  tell  you  it's  worth  while!' 

The  last  emphatic  sentence  was  intended  for  Strom- 
boli,  as  if  he  had  contradicted  the  statement,  or  were 
himself  not  'worth  while.' 

'There's  beer  there  already/  said  the  tenor,  seeing  a 
bottle  and  glass  on  a  deal  table,  and  making  for  them 
at  once. 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  11 

He  undid  the  patent  fastening,  stood  upright  with 
his  sturdy  stockinged  legs  wide  apart,  threw  his  head 
back,  opened  his  huge  painted  mouth  to  the  necessary 
extent,  but  not  to  the  full,  and  without  touching  his 
lips  poured  the  beer  into  the  chasm  in  a  gurgling  stream, 
which  he  swallowed  without  the  least  apparent  difficulty. 
When  he  had  taken  down  half  the  contents  of  the  small 
bottle  he  desisted  and  poured  the  rest  into  the  glass, 
apparently  for  Cordova's  benefit. 

'I  hope  I  have  left  you  enough,'  he  said,  as  he  pre 
pared  to  go.  'My  throat  felt  like  a  rusty  gun-barrel/ 

'Fright  is  very  bad  for  the  voice/  Schreiermeyer  re 
marked,  as  the  call-boy  handed  him  another  bottle  of 
beer  through  the  open  door. 

Stromboli  took  no  notice  of  the  direct  imputation. 
He  had  taken  a  very  small  and  fine  handkerchief  from 
his  sporran  and  was  carefully  tucking  it  into  his  collar 
with  some  idea  of  protecting  his  throat.  When  this 
was  done  his  admiration  for  his  colleague  broke  out 
again  without  the  slightest  warning. 

'You  were  superb,  magnificent,  surpassing!'  he  cried. 

He  seized  Cordova's  chalked  hands,  pressed  them  to 
his  own  whitened  chin,  by  sheer  force  of  stage  habit, 
because  the  red  on  his  lips  would  have  come  off  on 
them,  and  turned  away. 

'Surpassing!  Magnificent!  What  a  woman!'  he 
roared  in  tremendous  tones  as  he  strode  away  through 
the  dim  corridor  towards  the  stage  and  his  own  dress 
ing-room  on  the  other  side. 

Meanwhile  Schreiermeyer,  who  was  quite  as  thirsty 


12  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

as  the  tenor,  drank  what  the  latter  had  left  in  the 
only  glass  there  was,  and  set  the  full  bottle  beside  the 
latter  on  the  deal  table. 

'There  is  your  beer,'  he  said,  calling  attention  to  what 
he  had  done. 

Cordova  nodded  carelessly  and  sat  down  on  one  of 
the  crazy  chairs  before  the  toilet-table.  Her  maid  at 
once  came  forward  and  took  off  her  wig,  and  her  own 
beautiful  brown  hair  appeared,  pressed  and  matted 
close  to  her  head  in  a  rather  disorderly  coil. 

'You  must  be  tired/  said  the  manager,  with  more 
consideration  than  he  often  showed  to  any  one  whose 
next  engagement  was  already  signed.  'I'll  find  out 
how  many  were  killed  in  the  explosion  and  then  I'll  get 
hold  of  the  reporters.  You'll  have  two  columns  and  a 
picture  to-morrow/ 

Schreiermeyer  rarely  took  the  trouble  to  say  good- 
morning  or  good-night,  and  Cordova  heard  the  door 
shut  after  him  as  he  went  out. 

'Lock  it/  she  said  to  her  maid.  'I'm  sure  that  mad 
man  is  about  the  theatre  again.' 

The  maid  obeyed  with  alacrity.  She  was  very  tall 
and  dark,  and  when  she  had  entered  Cordova's  service 
two  years  ago  she  had  been  positively  cadaverous. 
She  herself  said  that  her  appearance  had  been  the  result 
of  living  many  years  with  the  celebrated  Madame 
Bonanni,  who  was  a  whirlwind,  an  earthquake,  a  phe 
nomenon,  a  cosmic  force.  No  one  who  had  lived  with  her 
in  her  stage  days  had  ever  grown  fat ;  it  was  as  much  as 
a  very  strong  constitution  could  do  not  to  grow  thin. 


CHAP.  I  THE  PRIMADONNA  13 

Madame  Bonanni  had  presented  the  cadaverous 
woman  to  the  young  Primadonna  as  one  of  the  most 
precious  of  her  possessions,  and  out  of  sheer  affection. 
It  was  true  that  since  the  great  singer  had  closed  her 
long  career  and  had  retired  to  live  in  the  country,  in 
Provence,  she  dressed  with  such  simplicity  as  made  it 
possible  for  her  to  exist  without  the  long-faithful,  all- 
skilful,  and  iron-handed  Alphonsine;  and  the  maid,  on 
her  side,  was  so  thoroughly  a  professional  theatrical 
dresser  that  she  must  have  died  of  inanition  in  what  she 
would  have  called  private  life.  Lastly,  she  had  heard 
that  Madame  Bonanni  had  now  given  up  the  semblance, 
long  far  from  empty,  but  certainly  vain,  of  a  waist,  and 
dressed  herself  in  a  garment  resembling  a  priest's  cas 
sock,  buttoned  in  front  from  her  throat  to  her  toes. 

Alphonsine  locked  the  door,  and  the  Primadonna 
leaned  her  elbows  on  the  sordid  toilet-table  and  stared 
at  her  chalked  and  painted  face,  vaguely  trying  to 
recognise  the  features  of  Margaret  Donne,  the  daughter 
of  the  quiet  Oxford  scholar,  her  real  self  as  she  had  been 
two  years  ago,  and  by  no  means  very  different  from  her 
everyday  self  now.  But  it  was  not  easy.  Margaret 
was  there,  no  doubt,  behind  the  paint  and  the  '  liquid 
white/  but  the  reality  was  what  the  public  saw  beyond 
the  footlights  two  or  three  times  a  week  during  the 
opera  season,  and  applauded  with  might  and  main  as  the 
most  successful  lyric  soprano  of  the  day. 

There  were  moments  when  she  tried  to  get  hold  of 
herself  and  bring  herself  back.  They  came  most  often 
after  some  great  emotion  in  the  theatre,  when  the  sight 


14  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

of  the  painted  mask  in  the  glass  shocked  and  disgusted 
her  as  it  did  to-night;  when  the  contrasts  of  life  were 
almost  more  than  she  could  bear,  when  her  sensibilities 
awoke  again,  when  the  fastidiousness  of  the  delicately 
nurtured  girl  revolted  under  the  rough  familiarity  of 
such  a  comrade  as  Stromboli,  and  rebelled  against  the 
sordid  cynicism  of  Schreiermeyer. 

She  shuddered  at  the  mere  idea  that  the  manager 
should  have  thought  she  would  drink  out  of  the  glass 
he  had  just  used.  Even  the  Italian  peasant,  who  had 
been  a  goatherd  in  Calabria,  and  could  hardly  write 
his  name,  showed  more  delicacy,  according  to  his  lights, 
which  were  certainly  not  dazzling.  A  faint  ray  of 
Roman  civilisation  had  reached  him  through  genera 
tions  of  slaves  and  serfs  and  shepherds.  But  no  such 
traditions  of  forgotten  delicacy  disturbed  the  manners 
of  Schreiermeyer.  The  glass  from  which  he  had  drunk 
was  good  enough  for  any  primadonna  in  his  company, 
and  it  was  silly  for  any  of  them  to  give  themselves  airs. 
Were  they  not  largely  his  creatures,  fed  from  his  hand, 
to  work  for  him  while  they  were  young,  and  to  be  turned 
out  as  soon  as  they  began  to  sing  false?  He  was  by  no 
means  the  worst  of  his  kind,  as  Margaret  knew  very 
well. 

She  thought  of  her  childhood,  of  her  mother  and  of 
her  father,  both  dead  long  before  she  had  gone  on  the 
stage;  and  of  that  excellent  and  kind  Mrs.  Rushmore, 
her  American  mother's  American  friend,  who  had  taken 
her  as  her  own  daughter,  and  had  loved  her  and  cared 
for  her,  and  had  shed  tears  when  Margaret  insisted  on 


CHAP.  I  THE  PRIMADONNA  15 

becoming  a  singer;  who  had  fought  for  her,  too,  and 
had  recovered  for  her  a  small  fortune  of  which  her 
mother  had  been  cheated.  For  Margaret  would  have 
been  more  than  well  off  without  her  profession,  even 
when  she  had  made  her  debut,  and  she  had  given  up 
much  to  be  a  singer,  believing  that  she  knew  what  she 
was  doing. 

But  now  she  was  ready  to  undo  it  all  and  to  go  back; 
at  least  she  thought  she  was,  as  she  stared  at  herself  in 
the  glass  while  the  pale  maid  drew  her  hair  back  and 
fastened  it  far  above  her  forehead  with  a  big  curved 
comb,  as  a  preliminary  to  getting  rid  of  paint  and 
powder.  At  this  stage  of  the  operation  the  Primadonna 
was  neither  Cordova  nor  Margaret  Donne;  there  was 
something  terrifying  about  the  exaggeratedly  painted 
mask  when  the  wig  was  gone  and  her  natural  hair  was 
drawn  tightly  back.  She  thought  she  was  like  a  mon 
strous  skinned  rabbit  with  staring  brown  eyes. 

At  first,  with  the  inexperience  of  youth,  she  used  to 
plunge  her  painted  face  into  soapsuds  and  scrub  vigor 
ously  till  her  own  complexion  appeared,  a  good  deal 
overheated  and  temporarily  shiny;  but  before  long  she 
had  yielded  to  Alphonsine's  entreaties  and  representa 
tions  and  had  adopted  the  butter  method,  long  familiar 
to  chimney-sweeps. 

The  butter  lay  ready;  not  in  a  lordly  dish,  but  in  a 
clean  tin  can  with  a  cover,  of  the  kind  workmen  use  for 
fetching  beer,  and  commonly  called  a  'growler'  in  New 
York,  for  some  reason  which  escapes  etymologists. 

Having  got  rid  of  the  upper  strata  of  white  lace  and 


16  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  i 

fine  linen,  artfully  done  up  so  as  to  tremble  like 
aspen  leaves  with  Lucia's  mad  trills,  Margaret  pro 
ceeded  to  butter  her  face  thoroughly.  It  occurred 
to  her  just  then  that  all  the  other  artists  who  had  ap 
peared  with  her  were  presumably  buttering  then1  faces 
at  the  same  moment,  and  that  if  the  public  could  look 
in  upon  them  it  would  be  very  much  surprised  indeed. 
At  the  thought  she  forgot  what  she  had  been  thinking 
of  and  smiled. 

The  maid,  who  was  holding  her  hair  back  where  it 
escaped  the  comb,  smiled  too,  and  evidently  considered 
that  the  relaxation  of  Margaret's  buttered  features 
was  equivalent  to  a  permission  to  speak. 

'It  was  a  great  triumph  for  Madame,7  she  observed. 
'All  the  papers  will  praise  Madame  to-morrow.  Madame 
saved  many  lives.7 

'Was  Mr.  Griggs  in  the  house?7  Margaret  asked.  'I 
did  not  see  him.7 

Alphonsine  did  not  answer  at  once,  and  when  she 
spoke  her  tone  had  changed. 

'Yes,  Madame.    Mr.  Griggs  was  in  the  house.' 

Margaret  wondered  whether  she  had  saved  his  life 
too,  in  his  own  estimation  or  in  that  of  her  maid,  and 
while  she  pondered  the  question  she  buttered  her  nose 
industriously. 

Alphonsine  took  a  commercial  view  of  the  case. 

'If  Madame  would  appear  three  times  more  in  New 
York,  before  sailing,  the  manager  would  give  ten  thou 
sand  francs  a  night,7  she  observed. 

Margaret  said  nothing  to  this,  but  she  thought  it 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  17 

would  be  amusing  to  show  herself  to  an  admiring  pub 
lic  in  her  present  condition. 

'Madame  is  now  a  heroine/  continued  Alphonsine, 
behind  her.  'Madame  can  ask  anything  she  pleases. 
Several  milliardaires  will  now  offer  to  marry  Madame.' 

'Alphonsine/  answered  Margaret,  'you  have  no 
sense/ 

The  maid  smiled,  knowing  that  her  mistress  could 
not  see  even  the  reflection  of  the  smile  in  the  glass;  but 
she  said  nothing. 

'No  sense/  Margaret  repeated,  with  conviction. 
'None  at  all.' 

The  maid  allowed  a  few  seconds  to  pass  before  she 
spoke  again. 

'Or  if  Madame  would  accept  to  sing  in  one  or  two 
private  houses  in  New  York,  we  could  ask  a  very  great 
price,  more  than  the  manager  would  give.' 

'I  daresay.' 

'It  is  certain/  said  Alphonsine.  'At  the  French  ball 
to  which  Madame  kindly  allowed  me  to  go,  the  valet 
of  Mr.  Van  Torp  approached  me.' 

'Indeed!'  exclaimed  Cordova  absently.  'How  very 
disagreeable ! ' 

'I  see  that  Madame  is  not  listening/  said  Alphonsine, 
taking  offence. 

What  she  said  was  so  true  that  Margaret  did  not  an 
swer  at  all.  Besides,  the  buttering  process  was  finished, 
and  it  was  time  for  the  hot  water.  She  went  to  the 
ugly  stationary  washstand  and  bent  over  it,  while  the 
maid  kept  her  hair  from  her  face.  Alphonsine  spoke 


18  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  i 

again  when  she  was  sure  that  her  mistress  could  not 
possibly  answer  her. 

'Mr.  Van  Torp's  valet  asked  me  whether  I  thought 
Madame  would  be  willing  to  sing  in  church,  at  the 
wedding,  the  day  after  to-morrow/  she  said,  holding 
the  Primadonna's  back  hair  firmly. 

The  head  moved  energetically  under  her  hands. 
Margaret  would  certainly  not  sing  at  Mr.  Van  Torp's 
wedding,  and  she  even  tried  to  say  so,  but  her  voice 
only  bubbled  and  sputtered  ineffectually  through  the 
soap  and  water. 

'I  was  sure  Madame  would  not/  continued  the  maid, 
1  though  Mr.  Van  Torp's  valet  said  that  money  was  no 
object.  He  had  heard  Mr.  Van  Torp  say  that  he  would 
give  five  thousand  dollars  to  have  Madame  sing  at  his 
wedding.' 

Margaret  did  not  shake  her  head  this  time,  nor  try  to 
speak,  but  Alphonsine  heard  the  little  impatient  tap  of 
her  slipper  on  the  wooden  floor.  It  was  not  often  that 
the  Primadonna  showed  so  much  annoyance  at  any 
thing;  and  of  late,  when  she  did,  the  cause  had  been 
connected  with  this  same  Mr.  Van  Torp.  The  mere 
mention  of  his  name  irritated  her,  and  Alphonsine 
seemed  to  know  it,  and  to  take  an  inexplicable  pleasure 
in  talking  about  him  —  about  Mr.  Rufus  Van  Torp, 
formerly  of  Chicago,  but  now  of  New  York.  He  was 
looked  upon  as  the  controlling  intellect  of  the  great 
Nickel  Trust;  in  fact,  he  was  the  Nickel  Trust  himself, 
and  the  other  men  in  it  were  mere  dummies  compared 
with  him.  He  had  sailed  the  uncertain  waters  of  finance 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  19 

for  twenty  years  or  more,  and  had  been  nearly  ship 
wrecked  more  than  once,  but  at  the  time  of  this  story 
he  was  on  the  top  of  the  wave ;  and  as  his  past  was  even 
more  entirely  a  matter  of  conjecture  than  his  future,  it 
would  be  useless  to  inquire  into  the  former  or  to  specu 
late  about  the  latter.  Moreover,  in  these  break-neck 
days  no  time  counts  but  the  present,  so  far  as  reputa 
tion  goes;  good  fame  itself  now  resembles  righteousness 
chiefly  because  it  .clothes  men  as  with  a  garment;  and 
as  we  have  the  highest  authority  for  assuming  that 
charity  covers  a  multitude  of  sins,  we  can  hardly  be 
surprised  that  it  should  be  so  generally  used  for  that 
purpose.  Rufus  Van  Torp's  charities  were  notorious, 
aggressive,  and  profitable.  The  same  sums  of  money 
could  not  have  bought  as  much  mingled  advertisement 
and  immunity  in  any  other  way. 

'Of  course/  observed  Alphonsine,  seeing  that  Mar 
garet  would  soon  be  able  to  speak  again,  '  money  is  no 
object  to  Madame  either!' 

This  subtle  flattery  was  evidently  meant  to  forestall 
reproof.  But  Margaret  was  now  splashing  vigorously, 
and  as  both  taps  were  running  the  noise  was  as  loud 
as  that  of  a  small  waterfall;  possibly  she  had  not  even 
heard  the  maid's  last  speech. 

Some  one  knocked  at  the  door,  and  knocked  a  second 
time  almost  directly.  The  Primadonna  pushed  Alphon 
sine  with  her  elbow,  speaking  being  still  impossible, 
and  the  woman  understood  that  she  was  to  answer  the 
summons. 

She  asked  who  was  knocking,  and  some  one  answered. 


20  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

'It  is  Mr.  Griggs,'  said  Alphonsine. 

'Ask  him  to  wait,'  Margaret  succeeded  in  saying. 

Alphonsine  transmitted  the  message  through  the 
closed  door,  and  listened  for  the  answer. 

'He  says  that  there  is  a  lady  dying  in  the  manager's 
room,  who  wants  Madame/  said  the  maid,  repeating 
what  she  heard. 

Margaret  stood  upright,  turned  quickly,  and  crossed 
the  room  to  the  door,  mopping  her  face  with  a  towel. 

'Who  is  it?'  she  asked  in  an  anxious  tone. 

'I'm  Griggs,'  said  a  deep  voice.  'Come  at  once,  if 
you  can,  for  the  poor  girl  cannot  last  long.' 

'One  minute!    Don't  go  away  —  I'm  coming  out.' 

Alphonsine  never  lost  her  head.  A  theatrical  dresser 
who  does  is  of  no  use.  She  had  already  brought  the 
wide  fur  coat  Margaret  always  wore  after  singing. 
In  ten  seconds  the  singer  was  completely  clothed  in  it, 
and  as  she  laid  her  hand  on  the  lock  to  let  herself  out, 
the  maid  placed  a  dark  Russian  hood  on  her  head  from 
behind  her  and  took  the  long  ends  twice  round  her 
throat. 

Mr.  Griggs  was  a  large  bony  man  with  iron-grey 
hair,  who  looked  very  strong.  He  had  a  sad  face  and 
deep-set  grey  eyes.  He  led  the  way  without  speaking, 
and  Cordova  walked  quickly  after  him.  Alphonsine 
did  not  follow,  for  she  was  responsible  for  the  belong 
ings  that  lay  about  in  the  dressing-room.  The  other 
doors  on  the  women's  side,  which  is  on  the  stage  left 
and  the  audience's  right  at  the  Opera,  were  all  tightly 
closed.  The  stage  itself  was  not  dark  yet,  and  the 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  21 

carpenters  were  putting  away  the  scenery  of  the  last 
act  as  methodically  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 

'Do  you  know  her?'  Margaret  asked  of  her  companion 
as  they  hurried  along  the  passage  that  leads  into  the 
house. 

'  Barely.  She  is  a  Miss  Bamberger,  and  she  was  to 
have  been  married  the  day  after  to-morrow,  poor  thing 
-  to  a  millionaire.  I  always  forget  his  name,  though 
I've  met  him  several  times.' 

'Van  Torp?'  asked  Margaret  as  they  hastened  on. 

'Yes.    That's  it  —  the  Nickel  Trust  man,  you  know.' 

'Yes/  Margaret  answered  in  a  low  tone.  'I  was 
asked  to  sing  at  the  wedding.' 

They  reached  the  door  of  the  manager's  room.  The 
clerks  from  the  box-office  and  several  other  persons 
employed  about  the  house  were  whispering  together 
in  the  little  lobby.  They  made  way  for  Cordova  and 
looked  with  curiosity  at  Griggs,  who  was  a  well-known 
man  of  letters. 

Schreiermeyer  stood  at  the  half-closed  inner  door, 
evidently  waiting. 

'Come  in,'  he  said  to  Margaret.     'The  doctor  is  there.' 

The  room  was  flooded  with  electric  light,  and  smelt 
of  very  strong  Havana  cigars  and  brandy.  Margaret 
saw  a  slight  figure  in  a  red  silk  evening  gown,  lying  at 
full  length  on  an  immense  red  leathern  sofa.  A  young 
doctor  was  kneeling  on  the  floor,  bending  down  to  press 
his  ear  against  the  girl's  side;  he  moved  his  head  con 
tinually,  listening  for  the  beating  of  her  heart.  Her 
face  was  of  a  type  every  one  knows,  and  had  a  certain 


22  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

half -pathetic  prettiness;  the  features  were  small,  and 
the  chin  was  degenerate  but  delicately  modelled.  The 
rather  colourless  fair  hair  was  elaborately  done ;  her  thin 
cheeks  were  dreadfully  white,  and  her  thin  neck  shrank 
painfully  each  time  she  breathed  out,  though  it  grew 
smooth  and  full  as  she  drew  in  her  breath.  A  short 
string  of  very  large  pearls  was  round  her  throat,  and 
gleamed  in  the  light  as  her  breathing  moved  them. 

Schreiermeyer  did  not  let  Griggs  come  in,  but  went 
out  to  him,  shut  the  door  and  stood  with  his  back  to  it. 

Margaret  did  not  look  behind  her,  but  crossed  directly 
to  the  sofa  and  leaned  over  the  dying  girl,  who  was 
conscious  and  looked  at  her  with  inquiring  eyes,  not 
recognising  her. 

'You  sent  for  me/  said  the  singer  gently. 

'Are  you  really  Madame  Cordova?'  asked  the  girl 
in  a  faint  tone. 

It  was  as  much  as  she  could  do  to  speak  at  all,  and 
the  doctor  looked  up  to  Margaret  and  raised  his  hand 
in  a  warning  gesture,  meaning  that  his  patient  should 
not  be  allowed  to  talk.  She  saw  his  movement  and 
smiled  faintly,  and  shook  her  head. 

'No  one  can  save  me/  she  said  to  him,  quite  quietly 
and  distinctly.  'Please  leave  us  together,  doctor.' 

'I  am  altogether  at  a  loss/  the  doctor  answered, 
speaking  to  Margaret  as  he  rose.  'There  are  no  signs 
of  asphyxia,  yet  the  heart  does  not  respond  to  stimu 
lants.  I've  tried  nitro-glycerine ' 

'Please,  please  go  awray!'  begged  the  girl. 

The  doctor  was  a  young  surgeon  from  the  nearest 


CHAP.  I  THE  PRIMADONNA  23 

hospital,  and  hated  to  leave  his  case.  He  was  going  to 
argue  the  point,  but  Margaret  stopped  him. 

'Go  into  the  next  room  for  a  moment,  please,'  she 
said  authoritatively. 

He  obeyed  with  a  bad  grace,  and  went  into  the 
empty  office  which  adjoined  the  manager's  room,  but 
he  left  the  door  open.  Margaret  knelt  down  in  his 
place  and  took  the  girl's  cold  white  hand. 

'Can  he  hear?'  asked  the  faint  voice. 

'Speak  low,'  Margaret  answered.     'What  can  I  do?' 

'It  is  a  secret,'  said  the  girl.  'The  last  I  shall  ever 
have,  but  I  must  tell  some  one  before  I  die.  I  know 
about  you.  I  know  you  are  a  lady,  and  very  good  and 
kind,  and  I  have  always  admired  you  so  much ! ' 

'You  can  trust  me,'  said  the  singer.  'What  is  the 
secret  I  am  to  keep  for  you?' 

'Do  you  believe  in  God?  I  do,  but  so  many  people 
don't  nowadays,  you  know.  Tell  me.' 

'Yes,'  Margaret  answered,  wondering.     'Yes,  I  do.' 

'Will  you  promise,  by  the  God  you  believe  in?' 

'I  promise  to  keep  your  secret,  so  help  me  God  in 
Heaven,'  said  Margaret  gravely. 

The  girl  seemed  relieved,  and  closed  her  eyes  for  a 
moment.  She  was  so  pale  and  still  that  Margaret 
thought  the  end  had  come,  but  presently  she  drew  breath 
again  and  spoke,  though  it  was  clear  that  she  had  not 
much  strength  left. 

'You  must  not  keep  the  secret  always,'  she  said. 
'You  may  tell  him  you  know  it.  Yes  —  let  him  know 
that  you  know  —  if  you  think  it  best  - 


24  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

1  Who  is  he? ' 

'Mr.  Van  Torp.' 

'Yes?'  Margaret  bent  her  ear  to  the  girl's  lips  and 
waited. 

Again  there  was  a  pause  of  many  seconds,  and  then 
the  voice  came  once  more,  with  a  great  effort  that  only 
produced  very  faint  sounds,  scarcely  above  a  whisper. 

'He  did  it.' 

That  was  all.  At  long  intervals  the  dying  girl  drew 
deep  breaths,  longer  and  longer,  and  then  no  more. 
Margaret  looked  anxiously  at  the  still  face  for  some  time, 
and  then  straightened  herself  suddenly. 

'Doctor!  Doctor!'  she  cried. 

The  young  man  was  beside  her  in  an  instant.  For  a 
full  minute  there  was  no  sound  in  the  room,  and  he  bent 
over  the  motionless  figure. 

'I'm  afraid  I  can't  do  anything,'  he  said  gently,  and 
he  rose  to  his  feet. 

'Is  she  really  dead?'  Margaret  asked,  in  an  under 
tone. 

'Yes.    Failure  of  the  heart,  from  shock/ 

'Is  that  what  you  will  call  it?' 

'That  is  what  it  is,'  said  the  doctor  with  a  little 
emphasis  of  offence,  as  if  his  science  had  been  doubted. 
'You  knew  her,  I  suppose?' 

'No.  I  never  saw  her  before.  I  will  call  Shreier- 
meyer.' 

She  stood  still  a  moment  longer,  looking  down  at  the 
dead  face,  and  she  wondered  what  it  all  meant,  and 
why  the  poor  girl  had  sent  for  her,  and  what  it  was 


CHAP.  I  THE   PRIMADONNA  25 

that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  done.  Then  she  turned  very 
slowly  and  went  out. 

'Dead,  I  suppose,'  said  Schreiermeyer  as  soon  as  he 
saw  the  Primadonna's  face.  'Her  relations  won't  get 
here  in  time.' 

Margaret  nodded  in  silence  and  went  on  through  the 
lobby. 

'The  rehearsal  is  at  eleven/  the  manager  called  out 
after  her,  in  his  wooden  voice. 

She  nodded  again,  but  did  not  look  back.  Griggs 
had  waited  in  order  to  take  her  back  to  her  dressing- 
room,  and  the  two  crossed  the  stage  together.  It  was 
almost  quite  dark  now,  and  the  carpenters  were  gone 
away. 

'Thank  you,'  Margaret  said.  'If  you  don't  care  to 
go  all  the  way  back  you  can  get  out  by  the  stage  door.' 

'Yes.  I  know  the  way  in  this  theatre.  Before  I 
say  good-night,  do  you  mind  telling  me  what  the  doctor 
said?' 

'He  said  she  died  of  failure  of  the  heart,  from  shock. 
Those  were  his  words.  Why  do  you  ask?' 

'Mere  curiosity.  I  helped  to  carry  her  — that  is,  I 
carried  her  myself  to  the  manager's  room,  and  she 
begged  me  to  call  you,  so  I  came  to  your  door.' 

'It  was  kind  of  you.  Perhaps  it  made  a  difference 
to  her,  poor  girl.  Good-night.' 

'Good-night.    When  do  you  sail?' 

'On  Saturday.  I  sing  "Juliet"  on  Friday  night  and 
sail  the  next  morning.' 

'On  the  Leofric?' 


26  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

'Yes.' 

'So  do  I.    We  shall  cross  together/ 

'How  delightful!    I'm  so  glad!    Good-night  again.' 

Alphonsine  was  standing  at  the  open  door  of  the 
dressing-room  in  the  bright  light,  and  Margaret  nodded 
and  went  in.  The  maid  looked  after  the  elderly  man 
till  he  finally  disappeared,  and  then  she  went  in  too  and 
locked  the  door  after  her. 

Griggs  walked  home  in  the  bitter  March  weather. 
When  he  was  in  New  York,  he  lived  in  rooms  on  the 
second  floor  of  an  old  business  building  not  far  from 
Fifth  Avenue.  He  was  quite  alone  in  the  house  at  night, 
and  had  to  walk  up  the  stairs  by  the  help  of  a  little 
electric  pocket-lantern  he  carried.  He  let  himself  into 
his  own  door,  turned  up  the  light,  slipped  off  his  over 
coat  and  gloves,  and  went  to  the  writing-table  to  get 
his  pipe.  That  is  very  often  the  first  thing  a  man  does 
when  he  gets  home  at  night. 

The  old  briar  pipe  he  preferred  to  any  other  lay  on 
the  blotting-paper  in  the  circle  where  the  light  was 
brightest.  As  he  took  it  a  stain  on  his  right  hand  caught 
his  eye,  and  he  dropped  the  pipe  to  look  at  it.  The 
blood  was  dark  and  was  quite  dry,  and  he  could  not  find 
any  scratch  to  account  for  it.  It  was  on  the  inner 
side  of  his  right  hand,  between  the  thumb  and  fore 
finger,  and  was  no  larger  than  an  ordinary  watch. 

'How  very  odd!'  exclaimed  Mr.  Griggs  aloud;  and  he 
turned  his  hand  this  way  and  that  under  the  electric 
lamp,  looking  for  some  small  wound  which  he  supposed 
must  have  bled.  There  was  a  little  more  inside  his 


CHAP.  I  THE  PRIMADONNA  27 

fingers,  and  between  them,  as  if  it  had  oozed  through 
and  then  had  spread  over  his  knuckles. 

But  he  could  find  nothing  to  account  for  it.  He  was 
an  elderly  man  who  had  lived  all  over  the  world  and 
had  seen  most  things,  and  he  was  not  easily  surprised, 
but  he  was  puzzled  now.  Not  the  least  strange  thing 
was  that  the  stain  should  be  as  small  as  it  was  and  yet 
so  dark.  He  crossed  the  room  again  and  examined  the 
front  of  his  overcoat  with  the  most  minute  attention. 
It  was  made  of  a  dark  frieze,  almost  black,  on  which  a 
red  stain  would  have  shown  very  little;  but  after  a  very 
careful  search  Griggs  was  convinced  that  the  blood 
which  had  stained  his  hand  had  not  touched  the  cloth. 

He  went  into  his  dressing-room  and  looked  at  his  face 
in  his  shaving-glass,  but  there  was  certainly  no  stain 
on  the  weather-beaten  cheeks  or  the  furrowed  forehead. 

'How  very  odd!'  he  exclaimed  a  second  time. 

He  washed  his  hands  slowly  and  carefully,  examining 
them  again  and  again,  for  he  thought  it  barely  possible 
that  the  skin  might  have  been  cracked  somewhere  by 
the  cutting  March  wind,  and  might  have  bled  a  little, 
but  he  could  not  find  the  least  sign  of  such  a  thing. 

When  he  was  finally  convinced  that  he  could  not 
account  for  the  stain  he  had  now  washed  off,  he  filled 
his  old  pipe  thoughtfully  and  sat  down  in  a  big  shabby 
armchair  beside  the  table  to  think  over  other  questions 
more  easy  of  solution.  For  he  was  a  philosophical  man, 
and  when  he  could  not  understand  a  matter  he  was 
able  to  put  it  away  in  a  safe  place,  to  be  kept  until  he 
got  more  information  about  it. 


28  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  I 

The  next  morning,  amidst  the  flamboyant  accounts 
of  the  subterranean  explosion,  and  of  the  heroic  con 
duct  of  Madame  Margarita  da  Cordova,  the  famous 
Primadonna,  in  checking  a  dangerous  panic  at  the  Opera, 
all  the  papers  found  room  for  a  long  paragraph  about 
Miss  Ida  H.  Bamberger,  who  had  died  at  the  theatre 
in  consequence  of  the  shock  her  nerves  had  received, 
and  who  was  to  have  married  the  celebrated  capitalist 
and  philanthropist,  Mr.  Van  Torp,  only  two  days  later. 
There  were  various  dramatic  and  heart-rending  accounts 
of  her  death,  and  most  of  them  agreed  that  she  had 
breathed  her  last  amidst  her  nearest  and  dearest,  who 
had  been  with  her  all  the  evening. 

But  Mr.  Griggs  read  these  paragraphs  thoughtfully, 
for  he  remembered  that  he  had  found  her  lying  in  a  heap 
behind  a  red  baize  door  which  his  memory  could  easily 
identify. 

After  all,  the  least  misleading  notice  was  the  one  in 
the  column  of  deaths :  — 

BAMBERGER.  —  On  Wednesday,  of  heart-failure 
from  shock,  IDA  HAMILTON,  only  child  of  HANNAH 
MOON  by  her  former  marriage  with  ISIDORE  BAMBERGER. 
California  papers  please  copy. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN  the  lives  of  professionals,  whatever  their  profession 
may  be,  the  ordinary  work  of  the  day  makes  very  little 
impression  on  the  memory,  whereas  a  very  strong  and 
lasting  one  is  often  made  by  circumstances  which  a  man 
of  leisure  or  a  woman  of  the  world  might  barely  notice, 
and  would  soon  forget.  In  Margaret's  life  there  were 
but  two  sorts  of  days,  those  on  which  she  was  to  sing 
and  those  on  which  she  was  at  liberty.  In  the  one  case 
she  had  a  cutlet  at  five  o'clock,  and  supper  when  she 
came  home;  in  the  other,  she  dined  like  other  people 
and  went  to  bed  early.  At  the  end  of  a  season  in  New 
York,  the  evenings  on  which  she  had  sung  all  seemed 
to  have  been  exactly  alike;  the  people  had  always  ap 
plauded  at  the  same  places,  she  had  always  been  called 
out  about  the  same  number  of  times,  she  had  always 
felt  very  much  the  same  pleasure  and  satisfaction,  and 
she  had  invariably  eaten  her  supper  with  the  same 
appetite.  Actors  lead  far  more  emotional  lives  than 
singers,  partly  because  they  have  the  excitement  of  a 
new  piece  much  more  often,  with  the  tremendous  ner 
vous  strain  of  a  first  night,  and  largely  because  they  are 
not  obliged  to  keep  themselves  in  such  perfect  training. 
To  an  actor  a  cold,  an  indigestion,  or  a  headache  is 
doubtless  an  annoyance;  but  to  a  leading  singer  such 

an  accident  almost  always  means  the  impossibility  of 

29 


30  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  n 

appearing  at  all,  with  serious  loss  of  money  to  the  artist, 
and  grave  disappointment  to  the  public.  The  result  of 
all  this  is  that  singers,  as  a  rule,  are  much  more  normal, 
healthy,  and  well-balanced  people  than  other  musicians, 
or  than  actors.  Moreover  they  generally  have  very 
strong  bodies  and  constitutions  to  begin  with,  and  when 
they  have  not  they  break  down  young. 

Paul  Griggs  had  an  old  traveller's  preference  for 
having  plenty  of  time,  and  he  was  on  board  the  steamer 
on  Saturday  a  full  hour  before  she  was  to  sail;  his  not 
very  numerous  belongings,  which  looked  as  weather- 
beaten  as  himself,  were  piled  up  unopened  in  his  cabin, 
and  he  himself  stood  on  the  upper  promenade  deck 
watching  the  passengers  as  they  came  on  board.  He 
was  an  observant  man,  and  it  interested  him  to  note 
the  expression  of  each  new  face  that  appeared;  for  the 
fact  of  starting  on  a  voyage  across  the  ocean  is  apt  to 
affect  people  inversely  as  their  experience.  Those  who 
cross  often  look  so  unconcerned  that  a  casual  observer 
might  think  they  were  not  to  start  at  all,  whereas  those 
who  are  going  for  the  first  time  are  either  visibly  flurried, 
or  are  posing  to  look  as  if  they  were  not,  though  they 
are  intensely  nervous  about  their  belongings;  or  they 
try  to  appear  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  ship,  or  else  as 
if  the  ship  belonged  to  them,  making  observations  which 
are  supposed  to  be  nautical,  but  which  instantly  stamp 
them  as  unutterable  land-lubbers  in  the  shrewd  esti 
mation  of  the  stewards;  and  the  latter,  as  every  old 
hand  is  aware,  always  know  everything  much  better 
than  the  captain. 


CHAP.  II  THE   PRIMADONNA  31 

Margaret  Donne  had  been  the  most  sensible  and 
simple  of  young  girls,  and  when  she  appeared  at  the 
gangway  very  quietly  dressed  in  brown,  with  a  brown 
fur  collar,  a  brown  hat,  a  brown  veil,  and  a  brown 
parasol,  there  was  really  nothing  striking  to  distinguish 
her  from  other  female  passengers,  except  her  good  looks 
and  her  well-set-up  figure.  Yet  somehow  it  seems  im 
possible  for  a  successful  primadonna  ever  to  escape 
notice.  Instead  of  one  maid,  for  instance,  Cordova  had 
two,  and  they  carried  rather  worn  leathern  boxes  that 
were  evidently  heavy  jewel-cases,  which  they  clutched 
with  both  hands  and  refused  to  give  up  to  the  stewards. 
They  also  had  about  them  the  indescribable  air  of  rather 
aggressive  assurance  which  belongs  especially  to  highly- 
paid  servants,  men  and  women.  Their  looks  said  to 
every  one:  'We  are  the  show  and  you  are  the  public, 
so  don't  stand  in  the  way,  for  if  you  do  the  performance 
cannot  go  on!'  They  gave  their  orders  about  their 
mistress's  things  to  the  chief  steward  as  if  he  were 
nothing  better  than  a  railway  porter  or  a  call-boy  at 
the  theatre;  and,  strange  to  say,  that  exalted  capitalist 
obeyed  with  a  docility  he  would  certainly  not  have 
shown  to  any  other  passenger  less  than  royal.  They 
knew  their  way  everywhere,  they  knew  exactly  what 
the  best  of  everything  was,  and  they  made  it  clear  that 
the  great  singer  would  have  nothing  less  than  the  very, 
very  best.  She  had  the  best  cabin  already,  and  she 
was  to  have  the  best  seat  at  table,  the  best  steward 
and  the  best  stewardess,  and  her  deck-chair  was  to  be 
always  in  the  best  place  on  the  upper  promenade  deck; 


32  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

and  there  was  to  be  no  mistake  about  it;  and  if  anybody 
questioned  the  right  of  Margarita  da  Cordova,  the  great 
lyric  soprano,  to  absolute  precedence  during  the  whole 
voyage,  from  start  to  finish,  her  two  maids  would  know 
the  reason  why,  and  make  the  captain  and  all  the  ship's 
company  wish  they  were  dead. 

That  was  their  attitude. 

But  this  was  not  all.  There  were  the  colleagues  who 
came  to  see  Margaret  off  and  wished  that  they  were 
going  too.  In  spite  of  the  windy  weather  there  was 
Signor  Pompeo  Stromboli,  the  tenor,  as  broad  as  any 
two  ordinary  men,  in  a  fur  coat  of  the  most  terribly 
expensive  sort,  bringing  an  enormous  box  of  chocolates 
with  his  best  wishes;  and  there  was  the  great  German 
dramatic  barytone,  Herr  Tiefenbach,  who  sang  'Am- 
fortas'  better  than  any  one,  and  was  a  true  musician 
as  well  as  a  man  of  culture,  and  he  brought  Margaret 
a  book  which  he  insisted  that  she  must  read  on  the 
voyage,  called  The  Genesis  of  the  Tone  Epos;  and  there 
was  that  excellent  and  useful  little  artist,  Fraulein 
Ottilie  Braun,  who  never  had  an  enemy  in  her  life,  who 
was  always  ready  to  sing  any  part  creditably  at  a  mo 
ment's  notice  if  one  of  the  leading  artists  broke  down, 
and  who  was  altogether  one  of  the  best,  kindest,  and 
least  conceited  human  beings  that  ever  joined  an  opera 
company.  She  brought  her  great  colleague  a  little 
bunch  of  violets. 

Least  expected  of  them  all,  there  was  Schreiermeyer, 
with  a  basket  of  grape  fruit  in  his  tightly-gloved  podgy 
hands;  and  he  was  smiling  cheerfully,  which  was  an 


CHAP.  H  THE  PRIMADONNA  33 

event  in  itself.  They  followed  Margaret  up  to  the 
promenade  deck  after  her  maids  had  gone  below,  and 
stood  round  her  in  a  group,  all  talking  at  once  in  different 
languages. 

Griggs  chanced  to  be  the  only  other  passenger  on  that 
part  of  the  deck  and  he  joined  the  party,  for  he  knew 
them  all.  Margaret  gave  him  her  hand  quietly  and 
nodded  to  him.  Signor  Stromboli  was  effusive  in  his 
greeting;  Herr  Tiefenbach  gave  him  a  solemn  grip;  little 
Fraulein  Ottilie  smiled  pleasantly,  and  Schreiermeyer 
put  into  his  hands  the  basket  he  carried,  judging  that 
as  he  could  not  get  anything  else  out  of  the  literary 
man  he  could  at  least  make  him  carry  a  parcel. 

1  Grape  fruit  for  Cordova,'  he  observed.  'You  can 
give  it  to  the  steward,  and  tell  him  to  keep  the  things 
in  a  cool  place.' 

Griggs  took  the  basket  with  a  slight  smile,  but  Strom 
boli  snatched  it  from  him  instantly,  and  managed  at 
the  same  time  to  seize  upon  the  book  Herr  Tiefenbach 
had  brought  without  dropping  his  own  big  box  of 
sweetmeats. 

'I  shall  give  everything  to  the  waiter!'  he  cried  with 
exuberant  energy  as  he  turned  away.  'He  shall  take 
care  of  Cordova  with  his  conscience!  I  tell  you,  I  will 
frighten  him!' 

This  was  possible,  and  even  probable.  Margaret 
looked  after  the  broad  figure. 

'Dear  old  Stromboli!'  she  laughed. 

'He  has  the  kindest  heart  in  the  world/  said  little 
Fraulein  Ottilie  Braun. 


34  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

'He  is  no  a  musician/  observed  Herr  Tiefenbach; 
'but  he  does  not  sing  out  of  tune.7 

'He  is  a  lunatic/  said  Schreiermeyer  gravely.  'All 
tenors  are  lunatics  —  except  about  money/  he  added 
thoughtfully. 

'I  think  Stromboli  is  very  sensible/  said  Margaret, 
turning  to  Griggs.  'He  brings  his  little  Calabrian  wife 
and  her  baby  out  with  him,  and  they  take  a  small 
house  for  the  winter  and  Italian  servants,  and  live  just 
as  if  they  were  in  their  own  country  and  see  only  their 
Italian  friends  —  instead  of  being  utterly  wretched  in  a 
horrible  hotel.' 

'For  the  modest  consideration  of  a  hundred  dollars 
a  day/  put  in  Griggs,  who  was  a  poor  man. 

'  I  wish  my  bills  were  never  more  than  that ! '  Margaret 
laughed. 

'Yes/  said  Schreiermeyer,  still  thoughtful.  'Strom 
boli  understands  money.  He  is  a  man  of  business. 
He  makes  his  wife  cook  for  him/ 

'I  often  cook  for  myself/  said  Fraulein  Ottilie  quite 
simply.  'If  I  had  a  husband,  I  would  cook  for  him 
too!'  She  laughed  like  a  child,  without  the  slightest 
sourness.  'It  is  easier  to  cook  well  than  to  marry  at 
all,  even  badly ! ' 

'I  do  not  at  all  agree  with  you/  answered  Herr 
Tiefenbach  severely.  'Without  flattering  myself,  I  may 
say  that  my  wife  married  well;  but  her  potato  dumplings 
are  terrifying/ 

'You  were  never  married,  were  you?'  Margaret  asked, 
turning  to  Griggs  with  a  smile. 


CHAP.  II  THE   PRIMADONNA  35 

'No/  he  answered.  'Can  you  make  potato  dump 
lings,  and  are  you  in  search  of  a  husband?' 

'It  is  the  other  way/  said  Schreiermeyer,  'for  the 
husbands  are  always  after  her.  Talking  of  marriage, 
that  girl  who  died  the  other  night  was  to  have  been 
married  to  Mr.  Van  Torp  yesterday,  and  they  were  to 
have  sailed  with  you  this  morning.' 

'I  saw  his  name  on  the-  '  Schreiermeyer  began, 
but  he  was  interrupted  by  a  tremendous  blast  from  the 
ship's  horn,  the  first  warning  for  non-passengers  to  go 
ashore. 

Before  the  noise  stopped  Stromboli  appeared  again, 
looking  very  much  pleased  with  himself,  and  twisting 
up  the  short  black  moustache  that  was  quite  lost  on 
his  big  face.  When  he  was  nearer  he  desisted  from 
twirling,  shook  a  fat  forefinger  at  Margaret  and  laughed. 

'Oh,  well,  then/  he  cried,  translating  his  Italian 
literally  into  English,  'I've  been  in  your  room,  Miss 
Cordova!  Who  is  this  Tom,  eh?  Flowers  from  Tom, 
one!  Sweets  from  Tom,  two!  A  telegram  from  Tom, 
three!  Tom,  Tom,  Tom;  it  is  full  of  Tom,  her  room! 
In  the  end,  what  is  this  Tom?  For  me,  I  only  know 
Tom  the  ruffian  in  the  Ballo  in  Maschera.  That  is  all 
the  Tom  I  know!' 

They  all  looked  at  Margaret  and  laughed.  She 
blushed  a  little,  more  out  of  annoyance  than  from 
any  other  reason. 

'The  maids  wished  to  put  me  out/  laughed  Stromboli, 
'but  they  could  not,  because  I  am  big.  So  I  read 
everything.  If  I  tell  you  I  read,  what  harm  is  there?' 


36  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  u 

'None  whatever/  Margaret  answered,  ' except  that  it 
is  bad  manners  to  open  other  people's  telegrams.7 

'Oh,  that!  The  maid  had  opened  it  with  water,  and 
was  reading  when  I  came.  So  I  read  too!  You  shall 
find  it  all  well  sealed  again,  have  no  fear!  They  all  do 
so.' 

'Pleasant  journey,'  said  Schreiermeyer  abruptly.  'I'm 
going  ashore.  I'll  see  you  in  Paris  in  three  weeks.' 

'Read  the  book/  said  Herr  Tiefenbach  earnestly,  as 
he  shook  hands.  'It  is  a  deep  book/ 

'Do  not  forget  me!'  cried  Stromboli  sentimentally, 
and  he  kissed  Margaret's  gloves  several  times. 

'Good-bye/  said  Fraulein  Ottilie.  'Every  one  is 
sorry  when  you  go!' 

Margaret  was  not  a  gushing  person,  but  she  stooped 
and  kissed  the  cheerful  little  woman,  and  pressed  her 
small  hand  affectionately. 

'And  everybody  is  glad  when  you  come,  my  dear/ 
she  said. 

For  Fraulein  Ottilie  was  perhaps  the  only  person  in 
the  company  whom  Cordova  really  liked,  and  who  did 
not  jar  dreadfully  on  her  at  one  time  or  another. 

Another  blast  from  the  horn  and  they  were  all  gone, 
leaving  her  and  Griggs  standing  by  the  rail  on  the 
upper  promenade  deck.  The  little  party  gathered  again 
on  the  pier  when  they  had  crossed  the  plank,  and  made 
farewell  signals  to  the  two,  and  then  disappeared.  Un 
consciously  Margaret  gave  a  little  sigh  of  relief,  and 
Griggs  noticed  it,  as  he  noticed  most  tilings,  but  said 
nothing. 


CHAP.  II  THE   PRIMADONNA  37 

There  was  silence  for  a  while,  and  the  gangplank  was 
still  in  place  when  the  horn  blew  a  third  time,  longer 
than  before. 

'How  very  odd!'  exclaimed  Griggs,  a  moment  after 
the  sound  had  ceased. 

'What  is  odd?'  Margaret  asked. 

She  saw  that  he  was  looking  down,  and  her  eyes 
followed  his.  A  square-shouldered  man  in  mourning 
was  walking  up  the  plank  in  a  leisurely  way,  followed 
by  a  well-dressed  English  valet,  who  carried  a  despatch- 
box  in  a  leathern  case. 

'It's  not  possible!'  Margaret  whispered  in  great 
surprise. 

'Perfectly  possible/  Griggs  answered,  in  a  low  voice. 
'That  is  Rufus  Van  Torp.' 

Margaret  drew  back  from  the  rail,  though  the  new 
comer  was  already  out  of  sight  on  the  lower  promenade 
deck,  to  which  the  plank  was  laid  to  suit  the  height  of 
the  tide.  She  moved  away  from  the  door  of  the  first 
cabin  companion. 

Griggs  went  with  her,  supposing  that  she  wished  to 
walk  up  and  down.  Numbers  of  other  passengers  were 
strolling  about  on  the  side  next  to  the  pier,  waiting  to 
see  the  start.  Margaret  went  on  forward,  turned  the 
deck-house  and  walked  to  the  rail  on  the  opposite  side, 
where  there  was  no  one.  Griggs  glanced  at  her  face 
and  thought  that  she  seemed  disturbed.  She  looked 
straight  before  her  at  the  closed  iron  doors  of  the  next 
pier,  at  which  no  ship  was  lying. 

'I  wish  I  knew  you  better,'  she  said  suddenly. 


38  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

Griggs  looked  at  her  quietly.  It  did  not  occur  to 
him  to  make  a  trivial  and  complimentary  answer  to 
this  advance,  such  as  most  men  of  the  world  would 
have  made,  even  at  his  age. 

'I  shall  be  very  glad  if  we  ever  know  each  other 
better/  he  said  after  a  short  pause. 

'So  shall  I.' 

She  leaned  upon  the  rail  and  looked  down  at  the 
eddying  water.  The  tide  had  turned  and  was  beginning 
to  go  out.  Griggs  watched  her  handsome  profile  in 
silence  for  a  time. 

'You  have  not  many  intimate  friends,  have  you?7 
she  asked  presently. 

'No,  only  one  or  two/ 

She  smiled. 

'I'm  not  trying  to  get  confidences  from  you.  But 
really,  that  is  very  vague.  You  must  surely  know 
whether  you  have  only  one,  or  whether  there  is  another. 
I'm  not  suggesting  myself  as  a  third,  either!' 

'Perhaps  I'm  over-cautious,'  Griggs  said.  'It  does 
not  matter.  You  began  by  saying  that  you  wished 
you  knew  me  better.  You  meant  that  if  you  did,  you 
would  either  tell  me  something  which  you  don't  tell 
everybody,  or  you  would  come  to  me  for  advice  about 
something,  or  you  would  ask  me  to  do  something  for 
you.  Is  that  it?7 

'I  suppose  so/ 

'It  was  not  very  hard  to  guess.  I'll  answer  the 
three  cases.  If  you  want  to  tell  me  a  secret,  don't. 
If  you  want  advice  without  telling  everything  about  the 


CHAP.  II  THE   PRIMADONNA  39 

case,  it  will  be  worthless.  But  if  there  is  anything  I 
can  do  for  you,  I'll  do  it  if  I  can,  and  I  won't  ask  any 
questions.' 

'That's  kind  and  sensible,'  Margaret  answered.  ' And 
I  should  not  be  in  the  least  afraid  to  tell  you  anything. 
You  would  not  repeat  it.' 

'No,  certainly  not.  But  some  day,  unless  we  became 
real  friends,  you  would  think  that  I  might,  and  then  you 
would  be  very  sorry/ 

A  short  pause  followed. 

'We  are  moving/  Margaret  said,  glancing  at  the  iron 
doors  again. 

'Yes,  we  are  off.' 

There  was  another  pause.  Then  Margaret  stood  up 
right  and  turned  her  face  to  her  companion.  She  did 
not  remember  that  she  had  ever  looked  steadily  into 
his  eyes  since  she  had  known  him. 

They  were  grey  and  rather  deeply  set  under  grizzled 
eyebrows  that  were  growing  thick  and  rough  with 
advancing  years,  and  they  met  hers  quietly.  She  knew 
at  once  that  she  could  bear  their  scrutiny  for  any 
length  of  time  without  blushing  or  feeling  nervous, 
though  there  was  something  in  them  that  was  stronger 
than  she. 

'It's  this,'  she  said  at  last,  as  if  she  had  been  talking 
and  had  reached  a  conclusion.  'I'm  alone,  and  I'm  a 
little  frightened.' 

'You?'    Griggs  smiled  rather  incredulously. 

'Yes.  Of  course  I'm  used  to  travelling  without  any 
one  and  taking  care  of  myself.  Singers  and  actresses 


40  THE  PRIMADONNA  '  CHAP.  II 

are  just  like  men  in  that,  and  it  did  not  occur  to  me 
this  morning  that  this  trip  could  be  different  from  any 
other.' 

'No.  Why  should  it  be  so  different?  I  don't  under 
stand.' 

'You  said  you  would  do  something  for  me  without 
asking  questions.  Will  you?' 

'If  I  can.' 

'  Keep  Mr.  Van  Torp  away  from  me  during  the  voyage. 
I  mean,  as  much  as  you  can  without  being  openly 
rude.  Have  my  chair  put  next  to  some  other  woman's 
and  your  own  on  my  other  side.  Do  you  mind  doing 
that?' 

Griggs  smiled. 

'No,'  he  said,  'I  don't  mind.' 

'And  if  I  am  walking  on  deck  and  he  joins  me,  come 
and  walk  beside  me  too.  Will  you?  Are  you  quite 
sure  you  don't  mind?' 

'Yes.'  He  was  still  smiling.  'I'm  quite  certain  that 
I  don't  dislike  the  idea.' 

'I  wish  I  were  sure  of  being  seasick,'  Margaret  said 
thoughtfully.  'It's  bad  for  the  voice,  but  it  would  be 
a  great  resource.' 

'As  a  resource,  I  shall  try  to  be  a  good  substitute 
for  it,'  said  Griggs. 

Margaret  realised  what  she  had  said  and  laughed. 

'But  it  is  no  laughing  matter,'  she  answered,  her  face 
growing  grave  again  after  a  moment. 

Griggs  had  promised  not  to  ask  questions,  and  he 
expressed  no  curiosity. 


CHAP.  II  THE  PRIMADONNA  41 

'As  soon  as  you  go  below  I'll  see  about  the  chair/ 
he  said. 

'My  cabin  is  on  this  deck/  Margaret  answered.  'I 
believe  I  have  a  tiny  little  sitting-room,  too.  It's  what 
they  call  a  suite  in  their  magnificent  language,  and  the 
photographs  in  the  advertisements  make  it  look  like  a 
palatial  apartment !' 

She  left  the  rail  as  she  spoke,  and  found  her  own 
door  on  the  same  side  of  the  ship,  not  very  far  away. 

'Here  it  is/  she  said.     'Thank  you  very  much/ 

She  looked  into  his  eyes  again  for  an  instant  and 
went  in. 

She  had  forgotten  Signor  Stromboli  and  what  he  had 
said,  for  her  thoughts  had  been  busy  with  a  graver 
matter,  but  she  smiled  when  she  saw  the  big  bunch  of 
dark  red  carnations  in  a  water-jug  on  the  table,  and  the 
little  cylinder-shaped  parcel  which  certainly  contained 
a  dozen  little  boxes  of  the  chocolate  'oublies'  she  liked, 
and  the  telegram,  with  its  impersonal-looking  address, 
waiting  to  be  opened  by  her  after  having  been  opened, 
read,  and  sealed  again  by  her  thoughtful  maids.  Such 
trifles  as  the  latter  circumstance  did  not  disturb  her  in 
the  least,  for  though  she  was  only  a  young  woman  of 
four  and  twenty,  a  singer  and  a  musician,  she  had  a 
philosophical  mind,  and  considered  that  if  virtue  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  greatness  of  princes,  moral  worth 
need  not  be  a  clever  lady's-maid's  strong  point. 

'Tom'  was  her  old  friend  Edmund  Lushington,  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  younger  writers  of  the 
day.  He  was  the  only  son  of  the  celebrated  soprano, 


42  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  n 

Madame  Bonanni,  now  retired  from  the  stage,  by  her 
marriage  with  an  English  gentleman  of  the  name  of 
Goodyear,  and  he  had  been  christened  Thomas.  But 
his  mother  had  got  his  name  and  surname  legally  changed 
when  he  was  a  child,  thinking  that  it  would  be  a  disad 
vantage  to  him  to  be  known  as  her  son,  as  indeed  it 
might  have  been  at  first;  even  now  the  world  did  not 
know  the  truth  about  his  birth,  but  it  would  not  have 
cared,  since  he  had  won  his  own  way. 

Margaret  meant  to  marry  him  if  she  married  at  all, 
for  he  had  been  faithful  in  his  devotion  to  her  nearly 
three  years;  and  his  rivalry  with  Constantine  Logotheti, 
her  other  serious  adorer,  had  brought  some  complications 
into  her  life.  But  on  mature  reflection  she  was  sure 
that  she  did  not  wish  to  marry  any  one  for  the  present. 
So  many  of  her  fellow-singers  had  married  young  and 
married  often,  evidently  following  the  advice  of  a  great 
American  humorist,  and  mostly  with  disastrous  conse 
quences,  that  Margaret  preferred  to  be  an  exception, 
and  to  marry  late  if  at  all. 

In  the  glaring  light  of  the  twentieth  century  it  at 
last  clearly  appears  that  marriageable  young  women 
have  always  looked  upon  marriage  as  the  chief  means 
of  escape  from  the  abject  slavery  and  humiliating  de 
pendence  hitherto  imposed  upon  virgins  between  fifteen 
and  fifty  years  old.  Shakespeare  lacked  the  courage  to 
write  the  'Seven  Ages  of  Woman/  a  matter  the  more 
to  be  regretted  as  no  other  writer  has  ever  possessed 
enough  command  of  the  English  language  to  describe 
more  than  three  out  of  the  seven  without  giving  offence : 


CHAP.  II  THE  PRIMADONNA  43 

namely,  youth,  which  lasts  from  sixteen  to  twenty; 
perfection,  which  begins  at  twenty  and  lasts  till  further 
notice;  and  old  age,  which  women  generally  place  beyond 
seventy,  though  some,  whose  strength  is  not  all  sorrow 
and  weakness  even  then,  do  not  reach  it  till  much  later. 
If  Shakespeare  had  dared  he  would  have  described  with 
poetic  fire  the  age  of  the  girl  who  never  marries.  But 
this  is  a  digression.  The  point  is  that  the  truth  about 
marriage  is  out,  since  the  modern  spinster  has  shown 
the  sisterhood  how  to  live,  and  an  amazing  number  of 
women  look  upon  wedlock  as  a  foolish  thing,  vainly 
imagined,  never  necessary,  and  rarely  amusing. 

The  state  of  perpetual  unsanctified  virginity,  however, 
is  not  for  poor  girls,  nor  for  operatic  singers,  nor  for 
kings'  daughters,  none  of  whom,  for  various  reasons, 
can  live,  or  are  allowed  to  live,  without  husbands. 
Unless  she  be  a  hunchback,  an  unmarried  royal  princess 
is  almost  as  great  an  exception  as  a  white  raven  or  a 
cat  without  a  tail;  a  primadonna  without  a  husband 
alive,  dead,  or  divorced,  is  hardly  more  common;  and 
poor  girls  marry  to  live.  But  give  a  modern  young 
woman  a  decent  social  position,  with  enough  money  for 
her  wants  and  an  average  dose  of  assurance,  and  she 
becomes  so  fastidious  in  the  choice  of  a  mate  that  no 
man  is  good  enough  for  her  till  she  is  too  old  to  be 
good  enough  for  any  man.  Even  then  the  chances  are 
that  she  will  not  deeply  regret  her  lost  opportunities, 
and  though  her  married  friends  will  tell  her  that  she 
has  made  a  mistake,  half  of  them  will  envy  her  in 
secret,  the  other  half  will  not  pity  her  much,  and  all 


44  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

will  ask  her  to  their  dinner-parties,  because  a  woman 
without  a  husband  is  such  a  convenience. 

In  respect  to  her  art  Margarita  da  Cordova  was  in  all 
ways  a  thorough  artist,  endowed  with  the  gifts,  ani 
mated  by  the  feelings,  and  afflicted  with  the  failings 
that  usually  make  up  an  artistic  nature.  But  Margaret 
Donne  was  a  sound  and  healthy  English  girl  who  had 
been  brought  up  in  the  right  way  by  a  very  refined  and 
cultivated  father  and  mother  who  loved  her  devotedly. 
If  they  had  lived  she  would  not  have  gone  upon  the 
stage;  for  as  her  mother's  friend  Mrs.  Rushmore  had 
often  told  her,  the  mere  thought  of  such  a  life  for  their 
daughter  would  have  broken  their  hearts.  She  was  a 
grown  woman  now,  and  high  on  the  wave  of  increasing 
success  and  celebrity,  but  she  still  had  a  childish 
misgiving  that  she  had  disobeyed  her  parents  and  done 
something  very  wrong,  just  as  when  she  had  surrepti 
tiously  got  into  the  jam  cupboard  at  the  age  of  five. 

Yet  there  are  old-fashioned  people  alive  even  now 
who  might  think  that  there  was  less  harm  in  becoming 
a  public  singer  than  in  keeping  Edmund  Lushington 
dangling  on  a  string  for  two  years  and  more.  Those 
things  are  matters  of  opinion.  Margaret  would  have 
answered  that  if  he  dangled  it  was  his  misfortune  and 
not  her  fault,  since  she  never,  in  her  own  opinion,  had 
done  anything  to  keep  him,  and  would  not  have  been 
broken-hearted  if  he  had  gone  away,  though  she  would 
have  missed  his  friendship  very  much.  Of  the  two, 
the  man  who  had  disturbed  her  maiden  peace  of  mind 
was  Logotheti,  whom  she  feared  and  sometimes  hated, 


CHAP.  II  THE  PRIMADONNA  45 

but  who  had  an  inexplicable  power  over  her  when  they 
met:  the  sort  of  fateful  influence  which  honest  Britons 
commonly  ascribe  to  all  foreigners  with  black  hair, 
good  teeth,  diamond  studs,  and  the  other  outward  signs 
of  wickedness.  Twice,  at  least,  Logotheti  had  behaved 
in  a  manner  positively  alarming,  and  on  the  second 
occasion  he  had  very  nearly  succeeded  in  carrying  her 
off  bodily  from  the  theatre  to  his  yacht,  a  fate  from 
which  Lushington  and  his  mother  had  been  instrumental 
in  saving  her.  Such  doings  were  shockingly  lawless, 
but  they  showed  a  degree  of  recklessly  passionate  ad 
miration  which  was  flattering  from  a  young  financier 
who  was  so  popular  with  women  that  he  found  it 
infinitely  easier  to  please  than  to  be  pleased. 

Perhaps,  if  Logotheti  could  have  put  on  a  little  Anglo- 
Saxon  coolness,  Margaret  might  have  married  him  by 
this  time.  Perhaps  she  would  have  married  Lushington, 
if  he  could  have  suddenly  been  animated  by  a  little 
Greek  fire.  As  things  stood,  she  told  herself  that  she 
did  not  care  to  take  a  man  who  meant  to  be  not  only 
her  master  but  her  tyrant,  nor  one  who  seemed  more 
inclined  to  be  her  slave  than  her  master. 

Meanwhile,  however,  it  was  the  Englishman  who  kept 
himself  constantly  in  mind  with  her  by  an  unbroken 
chain  of  small  attentions  that  often  made  her  smile 
but  sometimes  really  touched  her.  Any  one  could  cable 
'Pleasant  voyage/  and  sign  the  telegram  'Tom/  which 
gave  it  a  friendly  and  encouraging  look,  because  some 
how  'Tom'  is  a  cheerful,  plucky  little  name,  very  unlike 
'Edmund.'  But  it  was  quite  another  matter,  being  in 


46  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

England,  to  take  the  trouble  to  have  carnations  of  just 
the  right  shade  fresh  on  her  cabin  table  at  the  moment 
of  her  sailing  from  New  York,  and  beside  them  the  only 
sort  of  chocolates  she  liked.  That  was  more  than  a 
message,  it  was  a  visit,  a  presence,  a  real  reaching  out 
of  hand  to  hand. 

Logotheti,  on  the  contrary,  behaved  as  if  he  had 
forgotten  Margaret's  existence  as  soon  as  he  was  out 
of  her  sight;  and  they  now  no  longer  met  often,  but 
when  they  did  he  had  a  way  of  taking  up  the  thread  as 
if  there  had  been  no  interval,  which  was  almost  as 
effective  as  his  rival's  method;  for  it  produced  the  im 
pression  that  he  had  been  thinking  of  her  only,  and  of 
nothing  else  in  the  world  since  the  last  meeting,  and 
could  never  again  give  a  thought  to  any  other  woman. 
This  also  was  flattering.  He  never  wrote  to  her,  he 
never  telegraphed  good  wishes  for  a  journey  or  a  per 
formance,  he  never  sent  her  so  much  as  a  flower;  he 
acted  as  if  he  were  really  trying  to  forget  her,  as  perhaps 
he  was.  But  when  they  met,  he  was  no  sooner  in  the 
same  room  with  her  than  she  felt  the  old  disturbing 
influence  she  feared  and  yet  somehow  desired  in  spite 
of  herself,  and  much  as  she  preferred  the  companionship 
of  Lushington  and  liked  his  loyal  straightforward  ways, 
and  admired  his  great  talent,  she  felt  that  he  paled  and 
seemed  less  interesting  beside  the  vivid  personality  of 
the  Greek  financier. 

He  was  vivid;  no  other  word  expresses  what  he  was, 
and  if  that  one  cannot  properly  be  applied  to  a  man, 
so  much  the  worse  for  our  language.  His  colouring  was 


CHAP.  II  THE  PRIMADONNA  47 

too  handsome,  his  clothes  were  too  good,  his  shoes  were 
too  shiny,  his  ties  too  surprising,  and  he  not  only  wore 
diamonds  and  rubies,  but  very  valuable  ones.  Yet  he 
was  not  vulgarly  gorgeous;  he  was  Oriental.  No  one 
would  say  that  a  Chinese  idol  covered  with  gold  and 
precious  stones  was  overdressed,  but  it  would  be  out  of 
place  in  a  Scotch  kirk;  the  minister  would  be  thrown 
into  the  shade  and  the  congregation  would  look  at  the 
idol.  In  society,  which  nowadays  is  far  from  a  chiaros 
curo,  everybody  looked  at  Logotheti.  If  he  had  come 
from  any  place  nearer  than  Constantinople  people  would 
have  smiled  and  perhaps  laughed  at  him;  as  it  was,  he 
was  an  exotic,  and  besides,  he  had  the  reputation  of 
being  dangerous  to  women's  peace,  and  extremely 
awkward  to  meddle  with  in  a  quarrel. 

Margaret  sat  some  time  in  her  little  sitting-room 
reflecting  on  these  things,  for  she  knew  that  before 
many  days  were  past  she  must  meet  her  two  adorers; 
and  when  she  had  thought  enough  about  both,  she 
gave  orders  to  her  maids  about  arranging  her  belongings. 
By  and  by  she  went  to  luncheon  and  found  herself 
alone  at  some  distance  from  the  other  passengers,  next 
to  the  captain's  empty  seat;  but  she  was  rather  glad 
that  her  neighbours  had  not  come  to  table,  for  she  got 
what  she  wanted  very  quickly  and  had  no  reason  for 
waiting  after  she  had  finished. 

Then  she  took  a  book  and  went  on  deck  again,  and 
Alphonsine  found  her  chair  on  the  sunny  side  and 
installed  her  in  it  very  comfortably  and  covered  her  up, 
and  to  her  own  surprise  she  felt  that  she  was  very 


48  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  II 

sleepy;  so  that  just  as  she  was  wondering  why,  she 
dozed  off  and  began  to  dream  that  she  was  Isolde,  on 
board  of  Tristan's  ship,  and  that  she  was  singing  the 
part,  though  she  had  never  sung  it  and  probably  never 
would. 

When  she  opened  her  eyes  again  there  was  no  land 
in  sight,  and  the  big  steamer  was  going  quietly  with 
scarcely  any  roll.  She  looked  aft  and  saw  Paul  Griggs 
leaning  against  the  rail,  smoking;  and  she  turned  her 
head  the  other  way,  and  the  chair  next  to  her  own  on 
that  side  was  occupied  by  a  very  pleasant-looking 
young  woman  who  was  sitting  up  straight  and  showing 
the  pictures  in  a  book  to  a  beautiful  little  girl  who  stood 
beside  her. 

The  lady  had  a  very  quiet  healthy  face  and  smooth 
brown  hair,  and  was  simply  and  sensibly  dressed. 
Margaret  at  once  decided  that  she  was  not  the  child's 
mother,  nor  an  elder  sister,  but  some  one  who  had 
charge  of  her,  though  not  exactly  a  governess.  The 
child  was  about  nine  years  old;  she  had  a  quantity  of 
golden  hair  that  waved  naturally,  and  a  spiritual  face 
with  deep  violet  eyes,  a  broad  white  forehead  and  a 
pathetic  little  mouth. 

She  examined  each  picture,  and  then  looked  up 
quickly  at  the  lady,  keeping  her  wide  eyes  fixed  on  the 
latter's  face  with  an  expression  of  watchful  interest. 
The  lady  explained  each  picture  to  her,  but  in  such  a 
soft  whisper  that  Margaret  could  not  hear  a  sound. 
Yet  the  child  evidently  understood  every  word  easily. 
It  was  natural  to  suppose  that  the  lady  spoke  under 


CHAP.  II  THE    PRIMADONNA  49 

her  breath  in  order  not  to  disturb  Margaret  while  she 
was  asleep. 

'It  is  very  kind  of  you  to  whisper/  said  the  Prima- 
donna  graciously,  'but  I  am  awake  now.' 

The  lady  turned  with  a  pleasant  smile. 

1  Thank  you,'  she  answered. 

The  child  did  not  notice  Margaret's  little  speech,  but 
looked  up  from  the  book  for  the  explanation  of  the 
next  picture. 

'It  is  the  inside  of  the  Colosseum  in  Rome,  and  you 
will  see  it  before  long,'  said  the  lady  very  distinctly. 
'I  have  told  you  how  the  gladiators  fought  there,  and 
how  Saint  Ignatius  was  sent  all  the  way  from  Antioch 
to  be  devoured  by  lions  there,  like  many  other  martyrs.' 

The  little  girl  watched  her  face  intently,  nodded 
gravely,  and  looked  down  at  the  picture  again,  but 
said  nothing.  The  lady  turned  to  Margaret. 

'She  was  born  deaf  and  dumb,'  she  said  quietly,  'but 
I  have  taught  her  to  understand  from  the  lips,  and  she 
can  already  speak  quite  well.  She  is  very  clever.' 

'Poor  little  thing!'  Margaret  looked  at  the  girl  with 
increasing  interest.  'Such  a  little  beauty,  too!  What 
is  her  name?' 

'Ida ' 

The  child  had  turned  over  the  pages  to  another 
picture,  and  now  looked  up  for  the  explanation  of  it. 
Griggs  had  finished  his  cigar  and  came  and  sat  down 
on  Margaret's  other  side. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  Leofric  was  three  days  out,  and  therefore  halfway 
over  the  ocean,  for  she  was  a  fast  boat,  but  so  far  Griggs 
had  not  been  called  upon  to  hinder  Mr.  Van  Torp  from 
annoying  Margaret.  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  not  been  on 
deck;  in  fact,  he  had  not  been  seen  at  all  since  he  had 
disappeared  into  his  cabin  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before 
the  steamer  had  left  the  pier.  There  was  a  good  deal 
of  curiosity  about  him  amongst  the  passengers,  as  there 
would  have  been  about  the  famous  Primadonna  if  she 
had  not  come  punctually  to  every  meal,  and  if  she  had 
not  been  equally  regular  in  spending  a  certain  number 
of  hours  on  deck  every  day. 

At  first  every  one  was  anxious  to  have  what  people 
call  a  'good  look'  at  her,  because  all  the  usual  legends 
were  already  repeated  about  her  wherever  she  went. 
It  was  said  that  she  was  really  an  ugly  woman  of  thirty- 
five  who  had  been  married  to  a  Spanish  count  of  twice 
that  age,  and  that  he  had  died  leaving  her  penniless, 
so  that  she  had  been  obliged  to  support  herself  by  sing 
ing.  Others  were  equally  sure  that  she  was  a  beautiful 
escaped  nun,  who  had  been  forced  to  take  the  veil  in 
a  convent  in  Seville  by  cruel  parents,  but  who  had 
succeeded  in  getting  herself  carried  off  by  a  Polish 
nobleman  disguised  as  a  priest.  Every  one  remembered 

50 


CHAP,  in  THE   PRIMADONNA  51 

the  marvellous  voice  that  used  to  sing  so  high  above  all 
the  other  nuns,  behind  the  lattice  on  Sunday  afternoons 
at  the  church  of  the  Dominican  Convent.  That  had 
been  the  voice  of  Margarita  da  Cordova,  and  she  could 
never  go  back  to  Spain,  for  if  she  did  the  Inquisition 
would  seize  upon  her,  and  she  would  be  tortured  and 
probably  burnt  alive  to  encourage  the  other  nuns. 

This  was  very  romantic,  but  unfortunately  there  was 
a  man  who  said  he  knew  the  plain  truth  about  her,  and 
that  she  was  just  a  good-looking  Irish  girl  whose  father 
used  to  play  the  flute  at  a  theatre  in  Dublin,  and  whose 
mother  kept  a  sweetshop  in  Queen  Street.  The  man 
who  knew  this  had  often  seen  the  shop,  which  was  con 
clusive. 

Margaret  showed  herself  daily  and  the  myths  lost 
value,  for  every  one  saw  that  she  was  neither  an  escaped 
Spanish  nun  nor  the  gifted  offspring  of  a  Dublin  flute- 
player  and  a  female  retailer  of  bull's-eyes  and  butter 
scotch,  but  just  a  handsome,  healthy,  well-brought-up 
young  Englishwoman,  who  called  herself  Miss  Donne  in 
private  life. 

But  gossip,  finding  no  hold  upon  her,  turned  and  rent 
Mr.  Van  Torp,  who  dwelt  within  his  tent  like  Achilles, 
but  whether  brooding  or  sea-sick  no  one  was  ever  to 
know.  The  difference  of  opinion  about  him  was  amaz 
ing.  Some  said  he  had  no  heart,  since  he  had  not 
even  waited  for  the  funeral  of  the  poor  girl  who  was  to 
have  been  his  wife.  Others,  on  the  contrary,  said  that 
he  was  broken-hearted,  and  that  his  doctor  had  insisted 
upon  his  going  abroad  at  once,  doubtless  considering, 


52  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

as  the  best  practitioners  often  do,  that  it  is  wisest  to  send 
a  patient  who  is  in  a  dangerous  condition  to  distant 
shores,  where  some  other  doctor  will  get  the  credit  of 
having  killed  him  or  driven  him  mad.  Some  said  that 
Mr.  Van  Torp  was  concerned  in  the  affair  of  that  Chinese 
loan,  which  of  course  explained  why  he  was  forced  to 
go  to  Europe  in  spite  of  the  dreadful  misfortune  that 
had  happened  to  him.  The  man  who  knew  everything 
hinted  darkly  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  was  not  really  solvent, 
and  that  he  had  perhaps  left  the  country  just  at  the 
right  moment. 

'That  is  nonsense/  said  Miss  More  to  Margaret  in  an 
undertone,  for  they  had  both  heard  what  had  just  been 
said. 

Miss  More  was  the  lady  in  charge  of  the  pretty  deaf 
child,  and  the  latter  was  curled  up  in  the  next  chair 
with  a  little  piece  of  crochet  work.  Margaret  had  soon 
found  out  that  Miss  More  was  a  very  nice  woman,  after 
her  own  taste,  who  was  given  neither  to  flattery  nor  to 
prying,  the  two  faults  from  which  celebrities  are  gener 
ally  made  to  suffer  most  by  fellow-travellers  who  make 
their  acquaintance.  Miss  More  was  evidently  delighted 
to  find  herself  placed  on  deck  next  to  the  famous  singer, 
and  Margaret  was  so  well  satisfied  that  the  deck  steward 
had  already  received  a  preliminary  tip,  with  instructions 
to  keep  the  chairs  together  during  the  voyage. 

'Yes/  said  Margaret,  in  answer  to  Miss  More's  re 
mark.  'I  don't  believe  there  is  the  least  reason  for 
thinking  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  is  not  immensely  rich.  Do 
you  know  him?' 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   PRIMADONNA  53 

'Yes.' 

Miss  More  did  not  seem  inclined  to  enlarge  upon  the 
fact,  and  her  face  was  thoughtful  after  she  had  said  the 
one  word;  so  was  Margaret's  tone  when  she  answered: 

'So  do  I.' 

Each  of  the  young  women  understood  that  the  other 
did  not  care  to  talk  of  Mr.  Van  Torp.  Margaret  glanced 
sideways  at  her  neighbour  and  wondered  vaguely 
whether  the  latter's  experience  had  been  at  all  like  her 
own,  but  she  could  not  see  anything  to  make  her  think 
so.  Miss  More  had  a  singularly  pleasant  expression 
and  a  face  that  made  one  trust  her  at  once,  but  she  was 
far  from  beautiful,  and  would  hardly  pass  for  pretty 
beside  such  a  good-looking  woman  as  Margaret,  who 
after  all  was  not  what  people  call  an  out-and-out  beauty. 
It  was  odd  that  the  quiet  lady-like  teacher  should  have 
answered  monosyllabically  in  that  tone.  She  felt 
Margaret's  sidelong  look  of  inquiry,  and  turned  half 
round  after  glancing  at  little  Ida,  who  was  very  busy 
with  her  crochet. 

'I'm  afraid  you  may  have  misunderstood  me,'  she 
said,  smiling.  'If  I  did  not  say  any  more  it  is  because 
he  himself  does  not  wish  people  to  talk  of  what  he 
does.' 

'I  assure  you,  I'm  not  curious,'  Margaret  answered, 
smiling  too.  'I'm  sorry  if  I  looked  as  if  I  were.' 

'No  —  you  misunderstood  me,  and  it  was  a  little  my 
fault.  Mr.  Van  Torp  is  doing  something  very,  very 
kind  which  it  was  impossible  that  I  should  not  know  of, 
and  he  has  asked  me  not  to  tell  any  one.' 


54  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

'I  see/  Margaret  answered.  'Thank  you  for  telling 
me.  I  am  glad  to  know  that  he  - 

She  checked  herself.  She  detested  and  feared  the 
man,  for  reasons  of  her  own,  and  she  found  it  hard  to 
believe  that  he  could  do  something  'very,  very  kind' 
and  yet  not  wish  it  to  be  known.  He  did  not  strike  her 
as  being  the  kind  of  person  wrho  would  go  out  of  his 
way  to  hide  his  light  under  a  bushel.  Yet  Miss  More's 
tone  had  been  quiet  and  earnest.  Perhaps  he  had 
employed  her  to  teach  some  poor  deaf  and  dumb  child, 
like  little  Ida.  Her  words  seemed  to  imply  this,  for 
she  had  said  that  it  had  been  impossible  that  she  should 
not  know;  that  is,  he  had  been  forced  to  ask  her  advice 
or  help,  and  her  help  and  advice  could  only  be  considered 
indispensable  where  her  profession  as  a  teacher  of  the 
deaf  and  dumb  was  concerned. 

Miss  More  was  too  discreet  to  ask  the  question  which 
Margaret's  unfinished  sentence  suggested,  but  she 
would  not  let  the  speech  pass  quite  unanswered. 

'He  is  often  misjudged/  she  said.  'In  business  he 
may  be  what  many  people  say  he  is.  I  don't  under 
stand  business!  But  I  have  known  him  to  help  people 
who  needed  help  badly  and  who  never  guessed  that  he 
even  knew  their  names.' 

'You  must  be  right/  Margaret  answered. 

She  remembered  the  last  words  of  the  girl  who  had 
died  in  the  manager's  room  at  the  theatre.  There  had 
been  a  secret.  The  secret  was  that  Mr.  Van  Torp 
had  done  the  thing,  whatever  it  was.  She  had  probably 
not  known  what  she  was  saying,  but  it  had  been  on  her 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   PRIMADONNA  55 

mind  to  say  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  done  it,  the  man 
she  was  to  have  married.  Margaret's  first  impression 
had  been  that  the  thing  done  must  have  been  something 
very  bad,  because  she  herself  disliked  the  man  so  much; 
but  Miss  More  knew  him,  and  since  he  often  did  'very, 
very  kind  things/  it  was  possible  that  the  particular 
action  of  which  the  dying  girl  was  thinking  might  have 
been  a  charitable  one;  possibly  he  had  confided  the 
secret  to  her.  Margaret  smiled  rather  cruelly  at  her 
own  superior  knowledge  of  the  world  —  yes,  he  had 
told  the  girl  about  that  'secret'  charity  in  order  to  make 
a  good  impression  on  her!  Perhaps  that  was  his 
favourite  method  of  interesting  women;  if  it  was,  he 
had  not  invented  it.  Margaret  thought  she  could  have 
told  Miss  More  something  which  would  have  thrown 
another  light  on  Mr.  Van  Torp's  character. 

Her  reflections  had  led  her  back  to  the  painful  scene 
at  the  theatre,  and  she  remembered  the  account  of  it 
the  next  day,  and  the  fact  that  the  girl's  name  had  been 
Ida.  To  change  the  subject  she  asked  her  neighbour  an 
idle  question. 

'What  is  the  little  girl's  full  name?'  she  inquired. 

'Ida  Moon/  answered  Miss  More. 

'Moon?'  Margaret  turned  her  head  sharply.  'May 
I  ask  if  she  is  any  relation  of  the  California  Senator  who 
died  last  year?' 

'She  is  his  daughter/  said  Miss  More  quietly. 

Margaret  laid  one  hand  on  the  arm  of  her  chair  and 
leaned  forward  a  little,  so  as  to  see  the  child  better. 

'Really!'  she  exclaimed,  rather  deliberately,  as  if  she 


56  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

had  chosen  that  particular  word  out  of  a  number  that 
suggested  themselves.  'Really!'  she  repeated,  still 
more  slowly,  and  then  leaned  back  again  and  looked  at 
the  grey  waves. 

She  remembered  the  notice  of  Miss  Bamberger's 
death.  It  had  described  the  deceased  as  the  only  child 
of  Hannah  Moon  by  her  former  marriage  with  Isidore 
Bamberger.  But  Hannah  Moon,  as  Margaret  happened 
to  know,  was  now  the  widow  of  Senator  Alvah  Moon. 
Therefore  the  little  deaf  child  was  the  half-sister  of  the 
girl  who  had  died  at  the  theatre  in  Margaret's  arms  and 
had  been  christened  by  the  same  name.  Therefore, 
also,  she  was  related  to  Margaret,  whose  mother  had 
been  the  California  magnate's  cousin. 

'  How  small  the  world  is ! '  Margaret  said  in  a  low  voice 
as  she  looked  at  the  grey  waves. 

She  wondered  whether  little  Ida  had  ever  heard  of 
her  half-sister,  and  what  Miss  More  knew  about  it  all. 

'How  old  is  Mrs.  Moon?'  she  asked. 

'I  fancy  she  must  be  forty,  or  near  that.  I  know 
that  she  was  nearly  thirty  years  younger  than  the 
Senator,  but  I  never  saw  her.' 

'You  never  saw  her?'  Margaret  was  surprised. 

'No,'  Miss  More  answered.  'She  is  insane,  you  know. 
She  went  quite  mad  soon  after  the  little  girl  was  born. 
It  was  very  painful  for  the  Senator.  Her  delusion  was 
that  he  was  her  divorced  husband,  Mr.  Bamberger,  and 
when  the  child  came  into  the  world  she  insisted  that  it 
should  be  called  Ida,  and  that  she  had  no  other.  Mr. 
Bamberger's  daughter  was  Ida,  you  know.  It  was  very 


CHAP,  in  THE  PRIMADONNA  57 

strange.  Mrs.  Moon  was  convinced  that  she  was  forced  to 
live  her  life  over  again,  year  by  year,  as  an  expiation  for 
something  she  had  done.  The  doctors  say  it  is  a  hope 
less  case.  I  really  think  it  shortened  the  Senator's  life.' 

Margaret  did  not  think  that  the  world  had  any  cause 
to  complain  of  Mrs.  Moon  on  that  account. 

'So  this  child  is  quite  alone  in  the  world/  she  said. 

'Yes.  Her  father  is  dead  and  her  mother  is  in  an 
asylum.' 

'Poor  little  thing!' 

The  two  young  women  were  leaning  back  in  their 
chairs,  their  faces  turned  towards  each  other  as  they 
talked,  and  Ida  was  still  busy  with  her  crochet. 

'Luckily  she  has  a  sunny  nature,'  said  Miss  More. 
'She  is  interested  in  everything  she  sees  and  hears.' 
She  laughed  a  little.  'I  always  speak  of  it  as  hearing,' 
she  added,  'for  it  is  quite  as  quick,  when  there  is  light 
enough.  You  know  that,  since  you  have  talked  with 
her.' 

'Yes.  But  in  the  dark,  how  do  you  make  her  under 
stand?' 

'She  can  generally  read  what  I  say  by  laying  her 
hand  on  my  lips;  but  besides  that,  we  have  the  deaf 
and  dumb  alphabet,  and  she  can  feel  my  fingers  as  I 
make  the  letters.' 

'You  have  been  with  her  a  long  time,  I  suppose,' 
Margaret  said. 

'Since  she  was  three  years  old.' 

'California  is  a  beautiful  country,  isn't  it?'  asked 
Margaret  after  a  pause. 


58  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  m 

She  put  the  question  idly,  for  she  was  thinking  how 
hard  it  must  be  to  teach  deaf  and  dumb  children.  Miss 
More's  answer  surprised  her. 

'I  ha^e  never  been  there.' 

'But,  surely,  Senator  Moon  lived  in  San  Francisco/ 
Margaret  said. 

'Yes.  But  the  child  was  sent  to  New  England  when 
she  was  three,  and  never  went  back  again.  We  have 
been  living  in  the  country  near  Boston.' 

'And  the  Senator  used  to  pay  you  a  visit  now  and 
then,  of  course,  when  he  was  alive.  He  must  have 
been  immensely  pleased  by  the  success  of  your  teach 
ing.' 

Though  Margaret  felt  that  she  was  growing  more 
curious  about  little  Ida  than  she  often  was  about  any 
one,  it  did  not  occur  to  her  that  the  question  she  now 
suggested,  rather  than  asked,  was  an  indiscreet  one, 
and  she  was  surprised  by  her  companion's  silence.  She 
had  already  discovered  that  Miss  More  was  one  of  those 
literally  truthful  people  who  never  let  an  inaccurate 
statement  pass  their  lips,  and  who  will  be  obstinately 
silent  rather  than  answer  a  leading  question,  quite 
legardless  of  the  fact  that  silence  is  sometimes  the 
most  direct  answer  that  can  be  given.  On  the  present 
occasion  Miss  More  said  nothing  and  turned  her  eyes  to 
the  sea,  leaving  Margaret  to  make  any  deduction  she 
pleased;  but  only  one  suggested  itself,  namely,  that  the 
deceased  Senator  had  taken  very  little  interest  in  the 
child  of  his  old  age,  and  had  felt  no  affection  for  her. 
Margaret  wondered  whether  he  had  left  her  rich,  but 


CHAP.  Ill  THE   PRIMADONNA  59 

Miss  More's  silence  told  her  that  she  had  already  asked 
too  many  questions. 

She  glanced  down  the  long  line  of  passengers  beyond 
Miss  More  and  Ida.  Men,  women,  and  children  lay 
side  by  side  in  their  chairs,  wrapped  and  propped  like  a 
row  of  stuffed  specimens  in  a  museum.  They  were  not 
interesting,  Margaret  thought;  for  those  who  were 
awake  all  looked  discontented,  and  those  who  were 
asleep  looked  either  ill  or  apoplectic.  Perhaps  half  of 
them  were  crossing  because  they  were  obliged  to  go  to 
Europe  for  one  reason  or  another;  the  other  half  were 
going  in  an  aimless  way,  because  they  had  got  into  the 
habit  while  they  were  young,  or  had  been  told  that  it 
was  the  right  thing  to  do,  or  because  their  doctors  sent 
them  abroad  to  get  rid  of  them.  The  grey  light  from 
the  waves  was  reflected  on  the  immaculate  and  shiny 
white  paint,  and  shed  a  cold  glare  on  the  commonplace 
faces  and  on  the  plaid  rugs,  and  on  the  vivid  magazines 
which  many  of  the  people  were  reading,  or  pretending 
to  read ;  for  most  persons  only  look  at  the  pictures  nowa 
days,  and  read  the  advertisements.  A  steward  in  a 
very  short  jacket  was  serving  perfectly  unnecessary  cups 
of  weak  broth  on  a  big  tray,  and  a  great  number  of 
the  passengers  took  some,  with  a  vague  idea  that  the 
Company's  feelings  might  be  hurt  if  they  did  not,  or 
else  that  they  would  not  be  getting  their  money's 
worth. 

Between  the  railing  and  the  feet  of  the  passengers, 
which  stuck  out  over  the  foot-rests  of  their  chairs  to 
different  lengths  according  to  the  height  of  the  posses- 


60  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  HI 

sors,  certain  energetic  people  walked  ceaselessly  up 
and  down  the  deck,  sometimes  flattening  themselves 
against  the  railing  to  let  others  who  met  them  pass  by, 
and  sometimes,  when  the  ship  rolled  a  little,  stumbling 
against  an  outstretched  foot  or  two  without  making 
any  elaborate  apology  for  doing  so. 

Margaret  only  glanced  at  the  familiar  sight,  but  she 
made  a  little  movement  of  annoyance  almost  directly, 
and  took  up  the  book  that  lay  open  and  face  downwards 
on  her  knee;  she  became  absorbed  in  it  so  suddenly  as 
to  convey  the  impression  that  she  was  not  really  read 
ing  at  all. 

She  had  seen  Mr.  Van  Torp  and  Paul  Griggs  walking 
together  and  coming  towards  her. 

The  millionaire  was  shorter  than  his  companion  and 
more  clumsily  made,  though  not  by  any  means  a  stout 
man.  Though  he  did  not  look  like  a  soldier  he  had 
about  him  the  very  combative  air  which  belongs  to  so 
many  modern  financiers  of  the  Christian  breed.  There 
was  the  bull-dog  jaw,  the  iron  mouth,  and  the  aggressive 
blue  eye  of  the  man  who  takes  and  keeps  by  force  rather 
than  by  astuteness.  Though  his  face  had  lines  in  it 
and  his  complexion  was  far  from  brilliant  he  looked 
scarcely  forty  years  of  age,  and  his  short,  rough,  sandy 
hair  had  not  yet  begun  to  turn  grey. 

He  was  not  ugly,  but  Margaret  had  always  seen 
something  in  his  face  that  repelled  her.  It  was  some 
lack  of  proportion  somewhere,  which  she  could  not 
precisely  define;  it  was  something  that  was  out  of  the 
common  type  of  faces,  but  that  was  disquieting  rather 


CHAP.  Ill  THE  PRIMADONNA  61 

than  interesting.  Instead  of  wondering  what  it  meant, 
those  who  noticed  it  wished  it  were  not  there. 

Margaret  was  sure  she  could  distinguish  his  heavy 
step  from  Griggs's  when  he  was  near  her,  but  she  would 
not  look  up  from  her  book  till  he  stopped  and  spoke  to 
her. 

' Good-morning,  Madame  Cordova;  how  are  you  this 
morning?'  he  inquired,  holding  out  his  hand.  'You 
didn't  expect  to  see  me  on  board,  did  you?' 

His  tone  was  hard  and  business-like,  but  he  lifted  his 
yachting  cap  politely  as  he  held  out  his  hand.  Mar 
garet  hesitated  a  moment  before  taking  it,  and  when  she 
moved  her  own  he  was  already  holding  his  out  to  Miss 
More. 

' Good-morning,  Miss  More;  how  are  you  this  morn- 
ing?' 

Miss  More  leaned  forward  and  put  down  one  foot  as  if 
she  would  have  risen  in  the  presence  of  the  great  man, 
but  he  pushed  her  back  by  her  hand  which  he  held,  and 
proceeded  to  shake  hands  with  the  little  girl. 

' Good-morning,  Miss  Ida;  how  are  you  this  morning?' 

Margaret  felt  sure  that  if  he  had  shaken  hands  with 
a  hundred  people  he  would  have  repeated  the  same 
words  to  each  without  any  variation.  She  looked  at 
Griggs  imploringly,  and  glanced  at  his  vacant  chair  on 
her  right  side.  He  did  not  answer  by  sitting  down, 
because  the  action  would  have  been  too  like  deliberately 
telling  Mr.  Van  Torp  to  go  away,  but  he  began  to  fold 
up  the  chair  as  if  he  were  going  to  take  it  away,  and  then 
he  seemed  to  find  that  there  was  something  wrong  with 


62  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

one  of  its  joints,  and  altogether  it  gave  him  a  good  deal 
of  trouble,  and  made  it  quite  impossible  for  the  great 
man  to  get  any  nearer  to  Margaret. 

Little  Ida  had  taken  Mr.  Van  Torp's  proffered  hand, 
and  had  watched  his  hard  lips  when  he  spoke.  She 
answered  quite  clearly  and  rather  slowly,  in  the  some 
what  monotonous  voice  of  those  born  deaf  who  have 
learned  to  speak. 

'I'm  very  well,  thank  you,  Mr.  Van  Torp.  I  hope  you 
are  quite  well.' 

Margaret  heard,  and  saw  the  child's  face,  and  at  once 
decided  that,  if  the  little  girl  knew  of  her  own  relation 
ship  to  Ida  Bamberger,  she  was  certainly  ignorant  of 
the  fact  that  her  half-sister  had  been  engaged  to  Mr. 
Van  Torp,  when  she  had  died  so  suddenly  less  than  a 
week  ago.  Little  Ida's  manner  strengthened  the  im 
pression  in  Margaret's  mind  that  the  millionaire  was 
having  her  educated  by  Miss  More.  Yet  it  seemed 
impossible  that  the  rich  old  Senator  should  not  have 
left  her  well  provided. 

'I  see  you've  made  friends  with  Madame  Cordova/ 
said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'I'm  very  glad,  for  she's  quite  an 
old  friend  of  mine  too.' 

Margaret  made  a  slight  movement,  but  said  nothing. 
Miss  More  saw  her  annoyance  and  intervened  by  speak 
ing  to  the  financier. 

'We  began  to  fear  that  we  might  not  see  you  at  all 
on  the  voyage,'  she  said,  in  a  tone  of  some  concern.  'I 
hope  you  have  not  been  suffering  again.' 

Margaret  wondered  whether  she  meant  to  ask  if  he 


CHAP,  in  THE  PRIMADONNA  63 

had  been  sea-sick;  what  she  said  sounded  like  an  inquiry 
about  some  more  or  less  frequent  indisposition,  though 
Mr.  Van  Torp  looked  as  strong  as  a  ploughman. 

In  answer  to  the  question  he  glanced  sharply  at  Miss 
More,  and  shook  his  head. 

'I've  been  too  busy  to  come  on  deck/  he  said,  rather 
curtly,  and  he  turned  to  Margaret  again. 

'Will  you  take  a  little  walk  with  me,  Madame  Cor 
dova?'  he  asked. 

Not  having  any  valid  excuse  for  refusing,  Margaret 
smiled,  for  the  first  time  since  she  had  seen  him  on  deck. 

'I'm  so  comfortable!'  she  answered.  'Don't  make 
me  get  out  of  my  rug ! ' 

'If  you'll  take  a  little  walk  with  me,  I'll  give  you  a 
pretty  present,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp  playfully. 

Margaret  thought  it  best  to  laugh  and  shake  her  head 
at  this  singular  offer.  Little  Ida  had  been  watching 
them  both. 

'You'd  better  go  with  him,'  said  the  child  gravely. 
'He  makes  lovely  presents.' 

'Does  he?'     Margaret  laughed  again. 

'"A  fortress  that  parleys,  or  a  woman  who  listens,  is 
lost,'"  put  in  Griggs,  quoting  an  old  French  proverb. 

'TLer  I  won't  listen,'  Margaret  said. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  planted  himself  more  firmly  on  his 
sturdy  legs,  for  the  ship  was  rolling  a  little. 

'I'll  give  you  a  book,  Madame  Cordova,'  he  said. 

His  habit  of  constantly  repeating  the  name  of  the 
person  with  whom  he  was  talking  irritated  her  extremely. 
She  was  not  smiling  when  she  answered. 


64  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  HI 

'Thank  you.  I  have  more  books  than  I  can  possibly 
read.' 

'Yes.  But  you  have  not  the  one  I  will  give  you,  and 
it  happens  to  be  the  only  one  you  want.' 

'But  I  don't  want  any  book  at  all!  I  don't  want  to 
read!' 

'Yes,  you  do,  Madame  Cordova.  You  want  to  read 
this  one,  and  it's  the  only  copy  on  board,  and  if  you'll 
take  a  little  walk  with  me  I'll  give  it  to  you.' 

As  he  spoke  he  very  slowly  drew  a  new  book  from 
the  depths  of  the  wide  pocket  in  his  overcoat,  but  only 
far  enough  to  show  Margaret  the  first  words  of  the  title, 
and  he  kept  his  aggressive  blue  eyes  fixed  on  her  face. 
A  faint  blush  came  into  her  cheeks  at  once  and  he  let 
the  volume  slip  back.  Griggs,  being  on  his  other  side, 
had  not  seen  it,  and  it  meant  nothing  to  Miss  More.  To 
the  latter's  surprise  Margaret  pushed  her  heavy  rug 
from  her  knees  and  let  her  feet  slip  from  the  chair  to  the 
ground.  Her  eyes  met  Griggs's  as  she  rose,  and  seeing 
that  his  look  asked  her  whether  he  was  to  carry  out  her 
previous  instructions  and  walk  beside  her,  she  shook 
her  head. 

'Nine  times  out  of  ten,  proverbs  are  true,'  he  said  in  a 
tone  of  amusement. 

Mr.  Van  Torp's  hard  face  expressed  no  triumph 
when  Margaret  stood  beside  him,  ready  to  walk.  She 
had  yielded,  as  he  had  been  sure  she  would;  he  turned 
from  the  other  passengers  to  go  round  to  the  weather 
side  of  the  ship,  and  she  went  with  him  submissively. 
Just  at  the  point  where  the  wind  and  the  fine  spray 


CHAP,  in  THE   PRIMADONNA  65 

would  have  met  them  if  they  had  gone  on,  he  stopped 
in  the  lee  of  a  big  ventilator.  There  was  no  one  in  sight 
of  them  now. 

1  Excuse  me  for  making  you  get  up/  he  said.  'I 
wanted  to  see  you  alone  for  a  moment.' 

Margaret  said  nothing  in  answer  to  this  apology,  and 
she  met  his  fixed  eyes  coldly. 

'You  were  with  Miss  Bamberger  when  she  died/ 
he  said. 

Margaret  bent  her  head  gravely  in  assent.  His  face 
was  as  expressionless  as  a  stone. 

'I  thought  she  might  have  mentioned  me  before  she 
died/  he  said  slowly. 

'Yes/  Margaret  answered  after  a  moment's  pause; 
'she  did/ 

'What  did  she  say?' 

'She  told  me  that  it  was  a  secret,  but  that  I  was  to 
tell  you  what  she  said,  if  I  thought  it  best. ; 

'Are  you  going  to  tell  me?' 

It  was  impossible  to  guess  whether  he  was  controlling 
any  emotion  or  not;  but  if  the  men  with  whom  he  had 
done  business  where  large  sums  were  involved  had  seen 
him  now  and  had  heard  his  voice,  they  would  have  recog 
nised  the  tone  and  the  expression. 

'She  said,  "he  did  it/"  Margaret  answered  slowly, 
after  a  moment's  thought. 

'Was  that  all  she  said?' 

'  That  was  all.  A  moment  later  she  was  dead.  Before 
she  said  it,  she  told  me  it  was  a  secret,  and  she  made 
me  promise  solemnly  never  to  tell  any  one  but  you.' 


66  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

'It's  not  much  of  a  secret,  is  it?'  As  he  spoke,  Mr. 
Van  Torp  turned  his  eyes  from  Margaret's  at  last  and 
looked  at  the  grey  sea  beyond  the  ventilator. 

'  Such  as  it  is,  I  have  told  it  to  you  because  she  wished 
me  to/  answered  Margaret.  'But  I  shall  never  tell 
any  one  else.  It  will  be  all  the  easier  to  be  silent,  as  I 
have  not  the  least  idea  what  she  meant.' 

'She  meant  our  engagement,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp  in  a 
matter-of-fact  tone.  'We  had  broken  it  off  that  after 
noon.  She  meant  that  it  was  I  who  did  it,  and  so  it 
was.  Perhaps  she  did  not  like  to  think  that  when  she 
was  dead  people  might  call  her  heartless  and  say  she 
had  thrown  me  over;  and  no  one  would  ever  know  the 
truth  except  me,  unless  I  chose  to  tell  —  me  and  her 
father.' 

'Then  you  were  not  to  be  married  after  all!'  Margaret 
showed  her  surprise. 

'No.  I  had  broken  it  off.  We  were  going  to  let  it 
be  known  the  next  day/ 

'On  the  very  eve  of  the  wedding!' 

'Yes.'  Mr.  Van  Torp  fixed  his  eyes  on  Margaret's 
again.  'On  the  very  eve  of  the  wedding,'  he  said,  re 
peating  her  words. 

He  spoke  very  slowly  and  without  emphasis,  but  with 
the  greatest  possible  distinctness.  Margaret  had  once 
been  taken  to  see  a  motor-car  manufactory  and  she 
remembered  a  machine  that  clipped  bits  off  the  end  of 
an  iron  bar,  inch  by  inch,  smoothly  and  deliberately. 
Mr.  Van  Torp's  lips  made  her  think  of  that;  they  seemed 
to  cut  the  hard  words  one  by  one,  in  lengths. 


CHAP,  in  THE  PRIMADONNA  67 

'Poor  girl!'  she  sighed,  and  looked  away. 

The  man's  face  did  not  change,  and  if  his  next  words 
echoed  the  sympathy  she  expressed  his  tone  did  not. 

'I  was  a  good  deal  cut  up  myself,'  he  observed  coolly. 
1  Here's  your  book,  Madame  Cordova.' 

'No/  Margaret  answered  with  a  little  burst  of  indig 
nation,  'I  don't  want  it.  I  won't  take  it  from  you!' 

'What's  the  matter  now?'  asked  Mr.  Van  Torp  with 
out  the  least  change  of  manner.  'It's  your  friend  Mr. 
Lushington's  latest,  you  know,  and  it  won't  be  out  for 
ten  days.  I  thought  you  would  like  to  see  it,  so  I  got 
an  advance  copy  before  it  was  published.' 

He  held  the  volume  out  to  her,  but  she  would  not  even 
look  at  it,  nor  answer  him. 

'How  you  hate  me!    Don't  you,  Madame  Cordova?' 

Margaret  still  said  nothing.  She  was  considering 
how  she  could  best  get  rid  of  him.  If  she  simply  brushed 
past  him  and  went  back  to  her  chair  on  the  lee  side,  he 
would  follow  her  and  go  on  talking  to  her  as  if  nothing 
had  happened ;  and  she  knew  that  in  that  case  she  would 
lose  control  of  herself  before  Griggs  and  Miss  More. 

'Oh,  well,'  he  went  on,  'if  you  don't  want  the  book, 
I  don't.  I  can't  read  novels  myself,  and  I  daresay  it's 
trash  anyhow.' 

Thereupon,  with  a  quick  movement  of  his  arm  and 
hand,  he  sent  Mr.  Lushington's  latest  novel  flying  over 
the  lee  rail,  fully  thirty  feet  away,  and  it  dropped  out 
of  sight  into  the  grey  waves.  He  had  been  a  good  base 
ball  pitcher  in  his  youth. 

Margaret  bit  her  lip  and  her  eyes  flashed. 


68  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  m 

'You  are  quite  the  most  disgustingly  brutal  person 
I  ever  met/  she  said,  no  longer  able  to  keep  down  her 
anger. 

'No/  he  answered  calmly.  'I'm  not  brutal;  I'm  only 
logical.  I  took  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  get  that  book 
for  you  because  I  thought  it  would  give  you  pleasure, 
and  it  wasn't  a  particularly  legal  transaction  by  which 
I  got  it  either.  Since  you  didn't  want  it,  I  wasn't 
going  to  let  anybody  else  have  the  satisfaction  of  read 
ing  it  before  it  was  published,  so  I  just  threw  it  away 
because  it  is  safer  in  the  sea  than  knocking  about  in 
my  cabin.  If  you  hadn't  seen  me  throw  it  overboard 
you  would  never  have  believed  that  I  had.  You're  not 
much  given  to  believing  me,  anyway.  I've  noticed 
that.  Are  you,  now?' 

'Oh,  it  was  not  the  book!7 

Margaret  turned  from  him  and  made  a  step  forward 
so  that  she  faced  the  sharp  wind.  It  cut  her  face  and 
she  felt  that  the  little  pain  was  a  relief.  He  came  and 
stood  beside  her  with  his  hands  deep  in  the  pockets  of 
his  overcoat. 

'If  you  think  I'm  a  brute  on  account  of  what  I  told 
you  about  Miss  Bamberger/  he  said,  'that's  not  quite 
fair.  I  broke  off  our  engagement  because  I  found  out 
that  we  were  going  to  make  each  other  miserable  and 
we  should  have  had  to  divorce  in  six  months;  and  if 
half  the  people  who  are  just  going  to  get  married  would 
do  the  same  thing  there  would  be  a  lot  more  happy 
women  in  the  world,  not  to  say  men!  That's  all,  and 
she  knew  it,  poor  girl,  and  was  just  as  glad  as  I  was 


CHAP,  ill  THE   PRIMADONNA  69 

when  the  thing  was  done.  Now  what  is  there  so  brutal 
in  that,  Madame  Cordova?' 

Margaret  turned  on  him  almost  fiercely. 

'Why  do  you  tell  me  all  this?'  she  asked.  'For 
heaven's  sake  let  poor  Miss  Bamberger  rest  in  her 
grave ! ' 

'Since  you  ask  me  why/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
unmoved,  'I  tell  you  all  this  because  I  want  you  to  know 
more  about  me  than  you  do.  If  you  did,  you'd  hate  me 
less.  That's  the  plain  truth.  You  know  very  well 
that  there's  nobody  like  you,  and  that  if  I'd  judged  I 
had  the  slightest  chance  of  getting  you  I  would  no  more 
have  thought  of  marrying  Miss  Bamberger  than  of 
throwing  a  million  dollars  into  the  sea  after  that  book, 
or  ten  million,  and  that's  a  great  deal  of  money.' 

'I  ought  to  be  flattered/  said  Margaret  with  scorn, 
still  facing  the  wind. 

'No.  I'm  not  given  to  flattery,  and  money  means 
something  real  to  me,  because  I've  fought  for  it,  and 
got  it.  Your  regular  young  lover  will  always  call  you 
his  precious  treasure,  and  I  don't  see  much  difference 
between  a  precious  treasure  and  several  million  dollars. 
I'm  logical,  you  see.  I  tell  you  I'm  logical,  that's  all.' 

'I  daresay.  I  think  we  have  been  talking  here  long 
enough.  Shall  we  go  back? ' 

She  had  got  her  anger  under  again.  She  detested 
Mr.  Van  Torp,  but  she  was  honest  enough  to  realise 
that  for  the  present  she  had  resented  his  saying  that 
Lushington's  book  was  probably  trash,  much  more 
than  what  he  had  told  her  of  his  broken  engagement. 


70  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

She  turned  and  came  back  to  the  ventilator,  meaning 
to  go  around  to  her  chair,  but  he  stopped  her. 

1  Don't  go  yet,  please!'  he  said,  keeping  beside  her. 
'Call  me  a  disgusting  brute  if  you  like.  I  sha'n't  mind 
it,  and  I  daresay  it's  true  in  a  kind  of  way.  Business 
isn't  very  refining,  you  know,  and  it  was  the  only  educa 
tion  I  got  after  I  was  sixteen.  I'm  sorry  I  called  that 
book  rubbish,  for  I'm  sure  it's  not.  I've  met  Mr. 
Lushington  in  England  several  times;  he's  very  clever, 
and  he's  got  a  first-rate  position.  But  you  see  I  didn't 
like  your  refusing  the  book,  after  I'd  taken  so  much 
trouble  to  get  it  for  you.  Perhaps  if  I  hadn't  thrown 
it  overboard  you'd  take  it,  now  that  I've  apologised. 
Would  you?' 

His  tone  had  changed  at  last,  as  she  had  known  it  to 
change  before  in  the  course  of  an  acquaintance  that  had 
lasted  more  than  a  year.  He  put  the  question  almost 
humbly. 

'I  don't  know/  Margaret  answered,  relenting  a  little 
in  spite  of  herself.  'At  all  events  I'm  sorry  I  was  so 
rude.  I  lost  my  temper/ 

'It  was  very  natural,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp  meekly,  but 
not  looking  at  her,  'and  I  know  I  deserved  it.  You 
really  would  let  me  give  you  the  book  now,  if  it  were 
possible,  wouldn't  you?' 

'Perhaps.'  She  thought  that  as  there  was  no  such 
possibility  it  was  safe  to  say  as  much  as  that. 

'I  should  feel  so  much  better  if  you  would/  he  an 
swered.  'I  should  feel  as  if  you'd  accepted  my  apology. 
Won't  you  say  it,  Madame  Cordova?' 


CHAP,  ill  THE   PRIMADONNA  71 

'Well  —  yes  —  since  you  wish  it  so  much/  Margaret 
replied,  feeling  that  she  risked  nothing. 

'Here  it  is,  then/  he  said,  to  her  amazement,  produc 
ing  the  new  novel  from  the  pocket  of  his  overcoat,  and 
enjoying  her  surprise  as  he  put  it  into  her  hand. 

It  looked  like  a  trick  of  sleight  of  hand,  and  she  took 
the  book  and  stared  at  him,  as  a  child  stares  at  the 
conjuror  who  produces  an  apple  out  of  its  ear. 

'But  I  saw  you  throw  it  away/  she  said  in  a  puzzled 
tone. 

'I  got  two  while  I  was  about  it/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
smiling  without  showing  his  teeth.  'It  was  just  as  easy 
and  it  didn't  cost  me  any  more/ 

'I  see!    Thank  you  very  much.' 

She  knew  that  she  could  not  but  keep  the  volume 
now,  and  in  her  heart  she  was  glad  to  have  it,  for  Lush- 
ington  had  written  to  her  about  it  several  times  since 
she  had  been  in  America. 

'Well,  I'll  leave  you  now/  said  the  millionaire,  re 
suming  his  stony  expression.  'I  hope  I've  not  kept 
you  too  long.' 

Before  Margaret  had  realised  the  idiotic  convention 
ality  of  the  last  words  her  companion  had  disappeared 
and  she  was  left  alone.  He  had  not  gone  back  in  the 
direction  whence  they  had  come,  but  had  taken  the 
deserted  windward  side  of  the  ship,  doubtless  with 
the  intention  of  avoiding  the  crowd. 

Margaret  stood  still  for  some  time  in  the  lee  of  the 
ventilator,  holding  the  novel  in  her  hand  and  thinking. 
She  wondered  whether  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  planned  the 


72  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  Ill 

whole  scene,  including  the  sacrifice  of  the  novel.  If 
he  had  not,  it  was  certainly  strange  that  he  should  have 
had  the  second  copy  ready  in  his  pocket.  Lushington 
had  once  told  her  that  great  politicians  and  great 
financiers  were  always  great  comedians,  and  now  that 
she  remembered  the  saying  it  occurred  to  her  that  Mr. 
Van  Torp  reminded  her  of  a  certain  type  of  American 
actor,  a  type  that  has  a  heavy  jaw  and  an  aggressive 
eye,  and  strongly  resembles  the  portraits  of  Daniel 
Webster.  Now  Daniel  Webster  had  a  wide  reputation 
as  a  politician,  but  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the 
numerous  persons  who  lent  him  money  and  never  got 
it  back  thought  him  a  financier  of  undoubted  ability,  if 
not  a  comedian  of  talent.  There  were  giants  in  those 
days. 

The  English  girl,  breathing  the  clean  air  of  the  ocean, 
felt  as  if  something  had  left  a  bad  taste  in  her  mouth; 
and  the  famous  young  singer,  who  had  seen  in  two 
years  what  a  normal  Englishwoman  would  neither  see, 
nor  guess  at,  nor  wish  to  imagine  in  a  lifetime,  thought 
she  understood  tolerably  well  what  the  bad  taste  meant. 
Moreover,  Margaret  Donne  was  ashamed  of  what  Mar 
garita  da  Cordova  knew,  and  Cordova  had  moments  of 
sharp  regret  when  she  thought  of  the  girl  who  had  been 
herself,  and  had  lived  under  good  Mrs.  Rushmore's 
protection,  like  a  flower  in  a  glass  house. 

She  remembered,  too,  how  Lushington  and  Mrs. 
Rushmore  had  warned  her  and  entreated  her  not  to 
become  an  opera-singer.  She  had  taken  her  future 
into  her  own  hands  and  had  soon  found  out  what  it 


CHAP.  HI  THE   PRIMADONNA  73 

meant  to  be  a  celebrity  on  the  stage;  and  she  had  seen 
only  too  clearly  where  she  was  classed  by  the  women 
who  would  have  been  her  companions  and  friends  if 
she  had  kept  out  of  the  profession.  She  had  learned 
by  experience,  too,  how  little  real  consideration  she 
could  expect  from  men  of  the  world,  and  how  very  little 
she  could  really  exact  from  such  people  as  Mr.  Van  Torp; 
still  less  could  she  expect  to  get  it  from  persons  like 
Schreiermeyer,  who  looked  upon  the  gifted  men  and 
women  he  engaged  to  sing  as  so  many  head  of  cattle, 
to  be  driven  more  or  less  hard  according  to  their  value, 
and  to  be  turned  out  to  starve  the  moment  they  were 
broken-winded.  That  fate  is  sure  to  overtake  the  best 
of  them  sooner  or  later.  The  career  of  a  great  opera- 
singer  is  rarely  more  than  half  as  long  as  that  of  a  great 
tragedian,  and  even  when  a  primadonna  or  a  tenor 
makes  a  fortune,  the  decline  of  their  glory  is  far  more 
sudden  and  sad  than  that  of  actors  generally  is.  Lady 
Macbeth  is  as  great  a  part  as  Juliet  for  an  actress  of 
genius,  but  there  are  no  'old  parts'  for  singers;  the 
soprano  dare  not  turn  into  a  contralto  with  advancing 
years,  nor  does  the  unapproachable  Parsifal  of  eight- 
and-twenty  turn  into  an  incomparable  Amf ortas  at  fifty. 
For  the  actor,  it  often  happens  that  the  first  sign  of  age 
is  fatigue;  in  the  singer's  day,  the  first  shadow  is  an 
eclipse,  the  first  false  note  is  disaster,  the  first  break 
down  is  often  a  heart-rending  failure  that  brings  real 
tears  to  the  eyes  of  younger  comrades.  The  exquisite 
voice  does  not  grow  weak  and  pathetic  and  ethereal  by 
degrees,  so  that  we  still  love  to  hear  it,  even  to  the  end; 


74  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

far  more  often  it  is  suddenly  flat  or  sharp  by  a  quarter 
of  a  tone  throughout  whole  acts,  or  it  breaks  on  one 
note  in  a  discordant  shriek  that  is  the  end.  Down  goes 
the  curtain  then,  in  the  middle  of  the  great  opera,  and 
down  goes  the  great  singer  for  ever  into  tears  and 
silence.  Some  of  us  have  seen  that  happen,  many  have 
heard  of  it;  few  can  think  without  real  sympathy  of 
such  mortal  suffering  and  distress. 

Margaret  realised  all  this,  without  any  illusion,  but 
there  was  another  side  to  the  question.  There  was 
success,  glorious  and  far-reaching,  and  beyond  her 
brightest  dreams;  there  was  the  certainty  that  she  was 
amongst  the  very  first,  for  the  deafening  ring  of  univer 
sal  applause  was  in  her  ears;  and,  above  all,  there  was 
youth.  Sometimes  it  seemed  to  her  that  she  had  almost 
too  much,  and  that  some  dreadful  thing  must  happen 
to  her;  yet  if  there  were  moments  when  she  faintly 
regretted  the  calmer,  sweeter  life  she  might  have  led, 
she  knew  that  she  would  have  given  that  life  up,  over 
and  over  again,  for  the  splendid  joy  of  holding  thou 
sands  spellbound  while  she  sang.  She  had  the  real 
lyric  artist's  temperament,  for  that  breathless  silence 
of  the  many  while  her  voice  rang  out  alone,  and  trilled 
and  died  away  to  a  delicate  musical  echo,  was  more  to 
her  than  the  roar  of  applause  that  could  be  heard 
through  the  walls  and  closed  doors  in  the  street  outside. 
To  such  a  moment  as  that  Faustus  himself  would  have 
cried  'Stay!'  though  the  price  of  satisfied  desire  were 
his  soul.  And  there  had  been  many  such  moments  in 
Cordova's  life.  They  satisfied  something  much  deeper 


CHAP,  in  THE   PRIMADONNA  75 

than  greedy  vanity  and  stronger  than  hungry  ambition. 
Call  it  what  you  will,  according  to  the  worth  you  set  on 
such  art,  it  is  a  longing  which  only  artists  feel,  and  to 
which  only  something  in  themselves  can  answer.  To 
listen  to  perfect  music  is  a  feast  for  gods,  but  to  be  the 
living  instrument  beyond  compare  is  to  be  a  god  oneself. 
Of  our  five  senses,  sight  calls  up  visions,  divine  as  well 
as  earthly,  but  hearing  alone  can  link  body,  mind,  and 
soul  with  higher  things,  by  the  word  and  by  the  word 
made  song.  The  mere  memory  of  hearing  when  it  is 
lost  is  still  enough  for  the  ends  of  genius;  for  the  poet 
and  the  composer  touch  the  blind  most  deeply,  perhaps, 
when  other  senses  do  not  count  at  all;  but  a  painter  who 
loses  his  sight  is  as  helpless  in  the  world  of  art  as  a  dis 
masted  ship  in  the  middle  of  the  ocean. 

Some  of  these  thoughts  passed  through  Margaret's 
brain  as  she  stood  beside  the  ventilator  with  her  friend's 
new  book  in  her  -hand,  and,  although  her  reflections 
were  not  new  to  her,  it  was  the  first  time  she  clearly 
understood  that  her  life  had  made  two  natures  out  of 
her  original  self,  and  that  the  two  did  not  always  agree. 
She  felt  that  she  was  not  halved  by  the  process,  but 
doubled.  She  was  two  women  instead  of  one,  and  each 
woman  was  complete  in  herself.  She  had  not  found  this 
out  by  any  elaborate  self-study,  for  healthy  people 
do  not  study  themselves.  She  simply  felt  it,  and  she 
was  sure  it  was  true,  because  she  knew  that  each  of  her 
two  selves  was  able  to  do,  suffer,  and  enjoy  as  much 
as  any  one  woman  could.  The  one  might  like  what 
the  other  disliked  and  feared,  but  the  contradiction 


76  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

was  open  and  natural,  not  secret  or  morbid.  The  two 
women  were  called  respectively  Madame  Cordova  and 
Miss  Donne.  Miss  Donne  thought  Madame  Cordova 
very  showy,  and  much  too  tolerant  of  vulgar  things  and 
people,  if  not  a  little  touched  with  vulgarity  herself. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  brilliantly  successful  Cordova 
thought  Margaret  Donne  a  good  girl,  but  rather  silly. 
Miss  Donne  was  very  fond  of  Edmund  Lushington,  the 
writer,  but  the  Primadonna  had  a  distinct  weakness  for 
Constantine  Logotheti,  the  Greek  financier  who  lived 
in  Paris,  and  who  wore  too  many  rubies  and  diamonds. 

On  two  points,  at  least,  the  singer  and  the  modest 
English  girl  agreed,  for  they  both  detested  Rufus  Van 
Torp,  and  each  had  positive  proof  that  he  was  in  love 
with  her,  if  what  he  felt  deserved  the  name. 

For  in  very  different  ways  she  was  really  loved  by 
Lushington  and  by  Logotheti;  and  since  she  had  been 
famous  she  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  good  many 
very  high  and  imposing  personages,  whose  names  are 
to  be  found  in  the  first  and  second  part  of  the  Almanack 
de  Gotha,  in  the  Olympian  circle  of  the  reigning  or  the 
supernal  regions  of  the  Serene  Mediatized,  far  above 
the  common  herd  of  dukes  and  princes;  they  had  offered 
her  a  share  in  the  overflowing  abundance  of  their  ad- 
mirative  protection;  and  then  had  seemed  surprised,  if 
not  deeply  moved,  by  the  independence  she  showed  in 
declining  their  intimacy.  Some  of  them  were  frankly 
and  contentedly  cynical;  some  were  of  a  brutality  com 
pared  with  which  the  tastes  and  manners  of  a  bargee 
would  have  seemed  ladylike;  some  were  as  refined  and 


CHAP,  in  THE  PRIMADONNA  77 

sensitive  as  English  old  maids,  though  less  scrupulous 
and  much  less  shy;  the  one  was  as  generous  as  an  Irish 
sailor,  the  next  was  as  mean  as  a  Normandy  peasant; 
some  had  offered  her  rivers  of  rubies,  and  some  had 
proposed  to  take  her  incognito  for  a  drive  in  a  cab,  be 
cause  it  would  be  so  amusing  —  and  so  inexpensive. 
Yet  in  their  families  and  varieties  they  were  all  of  the 
same  species,  all  human  and  all  subject  to  the  ordinary 
laws  of  attraction  and  repulsion.  Rufus  Van  Torp  was 
not  like  them. 

Neither  of  Margaret's  selves  could  look  upon  him  as 
a  normal  human  being.  At  first  sight  there  was  nothing 
so  very  unusual  in  his  face,  certainly  nothing  that  sug 
gested  a  monster;  and  yet,  whatever  mood  she  chanced 
to  be  in,  she  could  not  be  with  him  five  minutes  without 
being  aware  of  something  undefinable  that  always 
disturbed  her  profoundly,  and  sometimes  became  posi 
tively  terrifying.  She  always  felt  the  sensation  coming 
upon  her  after  a  few  moments,  and  when  it  had  actually 
come  she  could  hardly  hide  her  repulsion  till  she  felt, 
as  to-day,  that  she  must  run  from  him,  without  the  least 
consideration  of  pride  or  dignity.  She  might  have  fled 
like  that  before  a  fire  or  a  flood,  or  from  the  scene  of 
an  earthquake,  and  more  than  once  nothing  had  kept 
her  in  her  place  but  her  strong  will  and  healthy 
nerves.  She  knew  that  it  was  like  the  panic  that 
seizes  people  in  the  presence  of  an  appalling  disturb 
ance  of  nature. 

Doubtless,  when  she  had  talked  with  Mr.  Van  Torp 
just  now,  she  had  been  disgusted  by  the  indifferent  way 


78  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  m 

in  which  he  spoke  of  poor  Miss  Bamberger's  sudden 
death;  it  was  still  more  certain  that  what  he  said  about 
the  book,  and  his  very  ungentlemanly  behaviour  in 
throwing  it  into  the  sea,  had  roused  her  justifiable  anger. 
But  she  would  have  smiled  at  the  thought  that  an 
exhibition  of  heartlessness,  or  the  most  utter  lack  of 
manners,  could  have  made  her  wish  to  run  away  from 
any  other  man.  Her  life  had  accustomed  her  to  people 
who  had  no  more  feeling  than  Schreiermeyer,  and  no 
better  manners  than  Pompeo  Stromboli.  Van  Torp 
might  have  been  on  his  very  best  behaviour  that  morn 
ing,  or  at  any  of  her  previous  chance  meetings  with  him; 
sooner  or  later  she  would  have  felt  that  same  absurd 
and  unreasoning  fear  of  him,  and  would  have  found  it 
very  hard  not  to  turn  and  make  her  escape.  His  face 
was  so  stony  and  his  eyes  were  so  aggressive;  he  was 
always  like  something  dreadful  that  was  just  going  to 
happen. 

Yet  Margarita  da  Cordova  was  a  brave  woman,  and 
had  lately  been  called  a  heroine  because  she  had  gone 
on  singing  after  that  explosion  till  the  people  were  quiet 
again;  and  Margaret  Donne  was  a  sensible  girl,  justly 
confident  of  being  able  to  take  care  of  herself  where 
men  were  concerned.  She  stood  still  and  wondered 
what  there  was  about  Mr.  Van  Torp  that  could  frighten 
her  so  dreadfully. 

After  a  little  while  she  went  quietly  back  to  her 
chair,  and  sat  down  between  Griggs  and  Miss  More. 
The  elderly  man  rose  and  packed  her  neatly  in  her  plaid, 
and  she  thanked  him.  Miss  More  looked  at  her  and 


CHAP,  in  THE  PRIMADONNA  79 

smiled  vaguely,  as  even  the  most  intelligent  people  do 
sometimes.  Then  Griggs  got  into  his  own  chair  again 
and  took  up  his  book. 

'Was  that  right  of  me?7  he  asked  presently,  so  low 
that  Miss  More  did  not  hear  him  speak. 

'Yes/  Margaret  answered,  under  her  breath,  'but 
don't  let  me  do  it  again,  please.' 

They  both  began  to  read,  but  after  a  time  Margaret 
spoke  to  him  again  without  turning  her  eyes. 

'  He  wanted  to  ask  me  about  that  girl  who  died  at  the 
theatre,'  she  said,  just  audibly. 

'Oh  — yes!' 

Griggs  seemed  so  vague  that  Margaret  glanced  at 
him.  He  was  looking  at  the  inside  of  his  right  hand  in 
a  meditative  way,  as  if  it  recalled  something.  If  he 
had  shown  more  interest  in  what  she  said  she  would 
have  told  him  what  she  had  just  learned,  about  the 
breaking  off  of  the  engagement,  but  he  was  evidently 
absorbed  in  thought,  while  he  slowly  rubbed  that  par 
ticular  spot  on  his  hand,  and  looked  at  it  again  and  again 
as  if  it  recalled  something. 

Margaret  did  not  resent  his  indifference,  for  he  was 
much  more  than  old  enough  to  be  her  father;  he  was  a 
man  whom  all  younger  writers  looked  upon  as  a  veteran, 
he  had  always  been  most  kind  and  courteous  to  her 
when  she  had  met  him,  and  she  freely  conceded  him 
the  right  to  be  occupied  with  his  own  thoughts  and  not 
with  hers.  With  him  she  was  always  Margaret  Donne, 
and  he  seldom  talked  to  her  about  music,  or  of  her 
own  work.  Indeed,  he  so  rarely  mentioned  music  that 


80  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  m 

she  fancied  he  did  not  really  care  for  it,  and  she  won 
dered  why  he  was  so  often  in  the  house  when  she 
sang. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  did  not  show  himself  at  luncheon,  and 
Margaret  began  to  hope  that  he  would  not  appear  on 
deck  again  till  the  next  day.  In  the  afternoon  the 
wind  dropped,  the  clouds  broke,  and  the  sun  shone 
brightly.  Little  Ida,  who  was  tired  of  doing  crochet 
work,  and  had  looked  at  all  the  books  that  had  pictures, 
came  and  begged  Margaret  to  walk  round  the  ship  with 
her.  It  would  please  her  small  child's  vanity  to  show 
everybody  that  the  great  singer  was  willing  to  be  seen 
walking  up  and  down  with  her,  although  she  was  quite 
deaf,  and  could  not  hope  ever  to  hear  music.  It  was  her 
greatest  delight  to  be  treated  before  every  one  as  if  she 
were  just  like  other  girls,  and  her  cleverness  in  watching 
the  lips  of  the  person  with  her,  without  seeming  too 
intent,  was  wonderful. 

They  went  the  whole  length  of  the  promenade  deck, 
as  if  they  were  reviewing  the  passengers,  bundled  and 
packed  in  their  chairs,  and  the  passengers  looked  at 
them  both  with  so  much  interest  that  the  child  made 
Margaret  come  all  the  way  back  again. 

'The  sea  has  a  voice,  too,  hasn't  it?'  Ida  asked,  as 
they  paused  and  looked  over  the  rail. 

She  glanced  up  quickly  for  the  answer,  but  Margaret 
did  not  find  one  at  once. 

'Because  I've  read  poetry  about  the  voices  of  the 
sea/  Ida  explained.  'And  in  books  they  talk  of  the 
music  of  the  waves,  and  then  they  say  the  sea  roars, 


CHAP,  in  THE   PRIMADONNA  81 

and  thunders  in  a  storm.  I  can  hear  thunder,  you 
know.  Did  you  know  that  I  could  hear  thunder?' 

Margaret  smiled  and  looked  interested. 

'It  bangs  in  the  back  of  my  head/  said  the  child 
gravely.  'But  I  should  like  to  hear  the  sea  thunder. 
I  often  watch  the  waves  on  the  beach,  as  if  they  were 
lips  moving,  and  I  try  to  understand  what  they  say. 
Of  course,  it's  play,  because  one  can't,  can  one?  But  I 
can  only  make  out  "Boom,  ta-ta-ta-ta,"  getting  quicker 
and  weaker  to  the  end,  you  know,  as  the  ripples  run  up 
the  sand.' 

'It's  very  like  what  I  hear,'  Margaret  answered. 

'Is  it  really?'  Little  Ida  was  delighted.  'Perhaps 
it's  a  language  after  all,  and  I  shall  make  it  out  some 
day.  You  see,  until  I  know  the  language  people  are 
speaking,  their  lips  look  as  if  they  were  talking  nonsense. 
But  I'm  sure  the  sea  could  not  really  talk  nonsense  all 
day  for  thousands  of  years.' 

'No,  I'm  sure  it  couldn't!'  Margaret  was  amused. 
'But  the  sea  is  not  alive,'  she  added. 

'Everything  that  moves  is  alive,'  the  child  said,  'and 
everything  that  is  alive  can  make  a  noise,  and  the  noise 
must  mean  something.  If  it  didn't,  it  would  be  of  no 
use,  and  everything  is  of  some  use.  So  there!' 

Delighted  with  her  own  argument,  the  beautiful  child 
laughed  and  showed  her  even  teeth  in  the  sun. 

They  were  standing  at  the  end  of  the  promenade 
deck,  which  extended  twenty  feet  abaft  the  smoking- 
room,  and  took  the  whole  beam;  above  the  latter,  as 
in  most  modern  ships,  there  was  the  boat  deck,  to  the 


82  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  in 

after-part  of  which  passengers  had  access.  Standing 
below,  it  was  easy  to  see  and  talk  with  any  one  who 
looked  over  the  upper  rail. 

Ida  threw  her  head  back  and  looked  up  as  she  laughed, 
and  Margaret  laughed  good-naturedly  with  her,  think 
ing  how  pretty  she  was.  But  suddenly  the  child's 
expression  changed,  her  face  grew  grave,  and  her  eyes 
fixed  themselves  intently  on  some  point  above.  Mar 
garet  looked  in  the  same  direction,  and  saw  that  Mr. 
Van  Torp  was  standing  alone  up  there,  leaning  against 
the  railing  and  evidently  not  seeing  her,  for  he  gazed 
fixedly  into  the  distance;  and  as  he  stood  there,  his  lips 
moved  as  if  he  were  talking  to  himself. 

Margaret  gave  a  little  start  of  surprise  when  she  saw 
him,  but  the  child  watched  him  steadily,  and  a  look  of 
fear  stole  over  her  face.  Suddenly  she  grasped  Mar 
garet's  arm. 

'Come  away!  Come  away!'  she  cried  in  a  low  tone 
of  terror. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MARGARET  was  sorry  to  say  good-bye  to  Miss  More  and 
little  Ida  when  the  voyage  was  over,  three  days  later. 
She  was  instinctively  fond  of  children,  as  all  healthy 
women  are,  and  she  saw  very  few  of  them  in  her  wander 
ing  life.  It  is  true  that  she  did  not  understand  them 
very  well,  for  she  had  been  an  only  child,  brought  up 
much  alone,  and  children's  ways  are  only  to  be  learnt 
and  understood  by  experience,  since  all  children  are 
experimentalists  in  life,  and  what  often  seems  to  us 
foolishness  in  them  is  practical  wisdom  of  the  explorative 
kind. 

When  Ida  had  pulled  Margaret  away  from  the  railing 
after  watching  Mr.  Van  Torp  while  he  was  talking  to 
himself,  the  singer  had  thought  very  little  of  it;  and 
Ida  never  mentioned  it  afterwards.  As  for  the  million 
aire,  he  was  hardly  seen  again,  and  he  made  no  attempt 
to  persuade  Margaret  to  take  another  walk  with  him  on 
deck. 

'Perhaps  you  would  like  to  see  my  place/  he  said,  as 
he  bade  her  good-bye  on  the  tender  at  Liverpool.  'It 
used  to  be  called  Oxley  Paddox,  but  I  didn't  like  that, 
so  I  changed  the  name  to  Torp  Towers.  I'm  Mr.  Van 
Torp  of  Torp  Towers.  Sounds  well,  don't  it?' 

'Yes,'  Margaret  answered,  biting  her  lip,  for  she 

83 


84  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

wanted  to  laugh.  'It  has  a  very  lordly  sound.  If  you 
bought  a  moor  and  a  river  in  Scotland,  you  might  call 
yourself  the  M'  Torp  of  Glen  Torp,  in  the  same  way.' 

'I  see  you're  laughing  at  me/  said  the  millionaire, 
with  a  quiet  smile  of  a  man  either  above  or  beyond 
ridicule.  'But  it's  all  a  game  in  a  toy-shop  anyway, 
this  having  a  place  in  Europe.  I  buy  a  doll  to  play 
with  when  I  have  time,  and  I  can  call  it  what  I  please, 
and  smash  its  head  when  I'm  tired  of  it.  It's  my  doll. 
It  isn't  any  one's  else's.  The  Towers  is  in  Derbyshire 
if  you  want  to  come/ 

Margaret  did  not  'want  to  come'  to  Torp  Towers, 
even  if  the  doll  wasn't  'any  one's  else's.'  She  was  sorry 
for  any  person  or  thing  that  had  the  misfortune  to  be 
Mr.  Van  Torp's  doll,  and  she  felt  her  inexplicable  fear 
of  him  coming  upon  her  while  he  was  speaking.  She 
broke  off  the  conversation  by  saying  good-bye  rather 
abruptly. 

'Then  you  won't  come/  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  amuse 
ment. 

'Really,  you  are  very  kind,  but  I  have  so  many 
engagements.' 

'Saturday  to  Monday  in  the  season  wouldn't  interfere 
with  your  engagements.  However,  do  as  you  like.' 

'Thank  you  very  much.     Good-bye  again.' 

She  escaped,  and  he  looked  after  her,  with  an  unsatis 
fied  expression  that  was  almost  wistful,  and  that  would 
certainly  not  have  been  in  his  face  if  she  could  have 
seen  it. 

Griggs  was  beside  her  when  she  went  ashore. 


CHAP.  IV  THE  PRIMADONNA  85 

'I  had  not  much  to  do  after  all/  he  said,  glancing  at 
Van  Torp. 

'No/  Margaret  answered,  'but  please  don't  think  it 
was  all  imagination.  I  may  tell  you  some  day.  No/ 
she  said  again,  after  a  short  pause,  'he  did  not  make 
himself  a  nuisance,  except  that  once,  and  now  he  has 
asked  me  to  his  place  in  Derbyshire.' 

'Torp  Towers/  Griggs  observed,  with  a  smile. 

'Yes.  I  could  hardly  help  laughing  when  he  told  me 
he  had  changed  its  name.' 

'It's  worth  seeing/  said  Griggs.  'A  big  old  house,  all 
full  of  other  people's  ghosts/ 

'Ghosts?' 

'I  mean  figuratively.  It's  full  of  things  that  remind 
one  of  the  people  who  lived  there.  It  has  one  of  the 
oldest  parks  in  England.  Lots  of  pheasants,  too  — 
but  that  cannot  last  long/ 

'Why  not?' 

'He  won't  let  any  one  shoot  them!  They  will  all  die 
of  overcrowding  in  two  or  three  years.  His  keepers 
are  three  men  from  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals. ' 

'What  a  mad  idea!'  Margaret  laughed.  'Is  he  a 
Buddhist?' 

'No.'  Paul  Griggs  knew  something  about  Buddhism. 
'Certainly  not!  He's  eccentric.  That's  all/ 

They  were  at  the  pier.  Half-an-hour  later  they  were 
in  the  train  together,  and  there  was  no  one  else  in  the 
carriage.  Miss  More  and  little  Ida  had  disappeared 
directly  after  landing,  but  Margaret  had  seen  Mr.  Van 


86  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

Torp  get  into  a  carriage  on  the  window  of  which  was 
pasted  the  label  of  the  rich  and  great:  'Reserved.'  She 
could  have  had  the  same  privilege  if  she  had  chosen  to 
ask  for  it  or  pay  for  it,  but  it  irritated  her  that  he  should 
treat  himself  like  a  superior  being.  Everything  he  did 
either  irritated  her  or  frightened  her,  and  she  found 
herself  constantly  thinking  of  him  and  wishing  that  he 
would  get  out  at  the  first  station.  Griggs  was  silent 
too,  and  Margaret  thought  he  really  might  have  taken 
some  trouble  to  amuse  her. 

She  had  Lushington's  book  on  her  knee,  for  she  had 
found  it  less  interesting  than  she  had  expected,  and 
was  rather  ashamed  of  not  having  finished  it  before 
meeting  him,  since  it  had  been  given  to  her.  She 
thought  he  might  come  down  as  far  as  Rugby  to  meet 
her,  arid  she  was  quite  willing  that  he  should  find  her 
with  it  in  her  hand.  A  literary  man  is  always  supposed 
to  be  flattered  at  finding  a  friend  reading  his  last  pro 
duction,  as  if  he  did  not  know  that  the  friend  has  prob 
ably  grabbed  the  volume  with  undignified  haste  the 
instant  he  was  on  the  horizon,  with  the  intention  of 
being  discovered  deep  in  it.  Yet  such  little  friendly 
frauds  are  sweet  compared  with  the  extremes  of  brutal 
frankness  to  which  our  dearest  friends  sometimes  think 
it  their  duty  to  go  with  us,  for  our  own  good. 

After  a  time  Griggs  spoke  to  her,  and  she  was  glad 
to  hear  his  voice.  She  had  grown  to  like  him  during 
the  voyage,  even  more  than  she  had  ever  thought 
probable.  She  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  wonder 
whether,  if  he  had  been  twenty-five  years  younger,  he 


CHAP,  iv  THE  PRIMADONNA  87 

might  not  have  been  the  one  man  she  had  ever  met 
whom  she  might  care  to  marry,  and  she  had  laughed  at 
the  involved  terms  of  the  hypothesis  as  soon  as  she 
thought  of  it.  Griggs  had  never  been  married,  but 
elderly  people  remembered  that  there  had  been  some 
romantic  tale  about  his  youth,  when  he  had  been  an 
unknown  young  writer  struggling  for  life  as  a  newspaper 
correspondent. 

'You  saw  the  notice  of  Miss  Bamberger's  death,  I 
suppose/  he  said,  turning  his  grey  eyes  to  hers. 

He  had  not  alluded  to  the  subject  during  the  voyage. 

'Yes/  Margaret  answered,  wondering  why  he  broached 
it  now. 

'The  notice  said  that  she  died  of  heart  failure,  from 
shock/  Griggs  continued.  'I  should  like  to  know  what 
you  think  about  it,  as  you  were  with  her  when  she  died. 
Have  you  any  idea  that  she  may  have  died  of  anything 
else?7 

'No.'  Margaret  was  surprised.  'The  doctor  said  it 
was  that.' 

'I  know.  I  only  wanted  to  have  your  own  impression. 
I  believe  that  when  people  die  of  heart  failure  in  that 
way,  they  often  make  desperate  efforts  to  explain  what 
has  happened,  and  go  on  trying  to  talk  when  they  can 
only  make  inarticulate  sounds.  Do  you  remember  if 
it  was  at  all  like  that?' 

'Not  at  all/  Margaret  said.  'She  whispered  the  last 
words  she  spoke,  but  they  were  quite  distinct.  Then  she 
drew  three  or  four  deep  breaths,  and  all  at  once  I  saw  that 
she  was  dead,  and  I  called  the  doctor  from  the  next  room/ 


88  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

'I  suppose  that  might  be  heart  failure/  said  Griggs 
thoughtfully.  'You  are  quite  sure  that  you  thought  it 
was  only  that,  are  you  not?' 

'Only  what?'  Margaret  asked  with  growing  sur 
prise. 

'Only  fright,  or  the  result  of  having  been  half-suffo 
cated  in  the  crowd.' 

'Yes,  I  think  I  am  sure.  What  do  you  mean?  Why 
do  you  insist  so  much?7 

'It's  of  no  use  to  tell  other  people,'  said  Griggs,  'but 
you  may  just  as  well  know.  I  found  her  lying  in  a 
heap  behind  a  door,  where  there  could  not  have  been 
much  of  a  crowd.' 

'Perhaps  she  had  taken  refuge  there,  to  save  herself/ 
Margaret  suggested. 

'Possibly.  But  there  was  another  thing.  When  I 
got  home  I  found  that  there  was  a  little  blood  on  the 
palm  of  my  hand.  It  was  the  hand  I  had  put  under 
her  waist  when  I  lifted  her.' 

'Do  you  mean  to  say  you  think  she  was  wounded?7 
Margaret  asked,  opening  her  eyes  wide. 

'There  was  blood  on  the  inside  of  my  hand/  Griggs 
answered,  'and  I  had  no  scratch  to  account  for  it.  I 
know  quite  well  that  it  was  on  the  hand  that  I  put 
under  her  waist  —  a  little  above  the  waist,  just  in  the 
middle  of  her  back.7 

'But  it  would  have  been  seen  afterwards.7 

'On  the  dark  red  silk  she  wore?  Not  if  there  was 
very  little  of  it.  The  doctor  never  thought  of  looking 
for  such  a  wound.  Why  should  he?  He  had  not  the 


CHAP.  IV  THE   PRIMADONNA  89 

slightest  reason  for  suspecting  that  the  poor  girl  had 
been  murdered.' 

'Murdered?' 

Margaret  looked  hard  at  Griggs,  and  then  she  suddenly 
shuddered  from  head  to  foot.  She  had  never  before 
had  such  a  sensation ;  it  was  like  a  shock  from  an  electric 
current  at  the  instant  when  the  contact  is  made,  not 
strong  enough  to  hurt,  but  yet  very  disagreeable.  She 
felt  it  at  the  moment  when  her  mind  connected  what 
Griggs  was  saying  with  the  dying  girl's  last  words,  'he 
did  it';  and  with  little  Ida's  look  of  horror  when  she 
had  watched  Mr.  Van  Torp's  lips  while  he  was  talking 
to  himself  on  the  boat-deck  of  the  Leofric;  and  again, 
with  the  physical  fear  of  the  man  that  always  came 
over  her  when  she  had  been  near  him  for  a  little  while. 
When  she  spoke  to  Griggs  again  the  tone  of  her  voice 
had  changed. 

'Please  tell  me  how  it  could  have  been  done,'  she 
said. 

'Easily  enough.  A  steel  bodkin  six  or  seven  inches 
long,  or  even  a  strong  hat-pin.  It  would  be  only  a 
question  of  strength.' 

Margaret  remembered  Mr.  Van  Torp's  coarse  hands, 
and  shuddered  again. 

'How  awful!'  she  exclaimed. 

'One  would  bleed  to  death  internally  before  long/ 
Griggs  said. 

'Are  you  sure?' 

'Yes.  That  is  the  reason  why  the  three-cornered 
blade  for  duelling  swords  was  introduced  in  France 


90  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

thirty  years  ago.  Before  that,  men  often  fought  with 
ordinary  foils  filed  to  a  point,  and  there  were  many 
deaths  from  internal  hemorrhage/ 

'What  odd  things  you  always  know!  That  would 
be  just  like  being  run  through  with  a  bodkin,  then?' 

'Very  much  the  same/ 

'But  it  would  have  been  found  out  afterwards/ 
Margaret  said,  'and  the  papers  would  have  been  full 
of  it.7 

'That  does  not  follow/  Griggs  answered.  'The  girl 
was  an  only  child,  and  her  mother  had  been  divorced 
and  married  again.  She  lived  alone  with  her  father, 
and  he  probably  was  told  the  truth.  But  Isidore 
Bamberger  is  not  the  man  to  spread  out  his  troubles 
before  the  public  in  the  newspapers.  On  the  contrary, 
if  he  found  out  that  his  daughter  had  been  killed  - 
supposing  that  she  was  —  he  probably  made  up  his 
mind  at  once  that  the  world  should  not  know  it  till  he 
had  caught  the  murderer.  So  he  sent  for  the  best 
detective  in  America,  put  the  matter  in  his  hands,  and 
inserted  a  notice  of  his  daughter's  death  that  agreed 
with  what  the  doctor  had  said.  That  would  be  the 
detective's  advice,  I'm  sure,  and  probably  Van  Torp 
approved  of  it.' 

'Mr.  Van  Torp?  Do  you  think  he  was  told  about  it? 
Why?' 

'First,  because  Bamberger  is  Van  Torp's  banker, 
broker,  figure-head,  and  general  representative  on  earth/ 
answered  Griggs.  'Secondly,  because  Van  Torp  was 
engaged  to  marry  the  girl/ 


CHAP.  IV  THE  PRIMADONNA  91 

'The  engagement  was  broken  off/  Margaret  said. 

'How  do  you  know  that?'  asked  Griggs  quickly. 

'Mr.  Van  Torp  told  me,  on  the  steamer.  They  had 
broken  it  off  that  very  day,  and  were  going  to  let  it  be 
known  the  next  morning.  He  told  me  so,  that  afternoon 
when  I  walked  with  him.' 

'Really!' 

Griggs  was  a  little  surprised,  but  as  he  did  not  connect 
Van  Torp  with  the  possibility  that  Miss  Bamberger 
had  been  murdered,  his  thoughts  did  not  dwell  on  the 
broken  engagement. 

'Why  don't  you  try  to  find  out  the  truth?'  Margaret 
asked  rather  anxiously.  'You  know  so  many  people 
everywhere  —  you  have  so  much  experience.' 

'I  never  had  much  taste  for  detective  work,'  answered 
the  literary  man,  '  and  besides,  this  is  none  of  my  busi 
ness.  But  Bamberger  and  Van  Torp  are  probably  both 
of  them  aware  by  this  time  that  I  found  the  girl  and 
carried  her  to  the  manager's  room,  and  when  they  are 
ready  to  ask  me  what  I  know,  or  what  I  remember,  the 
detective  they  are  employing  will  suddenly  appear  to 
me  in  the  shape  of  a  new  acquaintance  in  some  out-of- 
the-way  place,  who  will  go  to  work  scientifically  to 
make  me  talk  to  him.  He  will  very  likely  have  a  little 
theory  of  his  own,  to  the  effect  that  since  it  was  I  who 
brought  Miss  Bamberger  to  Schreiermeyer's  room,  it 
was  probably  I  who  killed  her,  for  some  mysterious 
reason!' 

'Shall  you  tell  him  about  the  drop  of  blood  on  your 
hand?' 


92  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

'Without  the  slightest  hesitation.  But  not  until  I  am 
asked,  and  I  shall  be  very  glad  if  you  will  not  speak  of  it.' 

'I  won't/  Margaret  said;  'but  I  wonder  why  you  have 
told  me  if  you  mean  to  keep  it  a  secret!' 

The  veteran  man  of  letters  turned  his  sad  grey  eyes 
to  hers,  while  his  lips  smiled. 

'The  world  is  not  all  bad/  he  said.  'All  men  are 
not  liars,  and  all  women  do  not  betray  confidence.' 

'It's  very  good  to  hear  a  man  like  you  say  that/ 
Margaret  answered.  'It  means  something.' 

'Yes/  assented  Griggs  thoughtfully.  'It  means  a 
great  deal  to  me  to  be  sure  of  it,  now  that  most  of  my 
life  is  lived.' 

'Were  you  unhappy  when  you  were  young?' 

She  asked  the  question  as  a  woman  sometimes  does 
who  feels  herself  strongly  drawn  to  a  man  much  older 
than  she.  Griggs  did  not  answer  at  once,  and  when 
he  spoke  his  voice  was  unusually  grave,  and  his  eyes 
looked  far  away. 

'A  great  misfortune  happened  to  me/  he  said.  'A 
great  misfortune/  he  repeated  slowly,  after  a  pause, 
and  his  tone  and  look  told  Margaret  how  great  that 
calamity  had  been  better  than  a  score  of  big  words. 

'Forgive  me/  Margaret  said  softly;  'I  should  have 
known.' 

'No/  Griggs  answered  after  a  moment.  'You  could 
not  have  known.  It  happened  very  long  ago,  perhaps 
ten  years  before  you  were  born.' 

Again  he  turned  his  sad  grey  eyes  to  hers,  but  no 
smile  lingered  now  about  the  rather  stern  mouth.  The 


CHAP,  iv  THE  PRIMADONNA  93 

two  looked  at  each  other  quietly  for  five  or  six  seconds, 
and  that  may  seem  a  long  time.  When  Margaret  turned 
away  from  the  elderly  man's  more  enduring  gaze,  both 
felt  that  there  was  a  bond  of  sympathy  between  them 
which  neither  had  quite  acknowledged  till  then.  There 
was  silence  after  that,  and  Margaret  looked  out  of  the 
window,  while  her  hand  unconsciously  played  with  the 
book  on  her  knee,  lifting  the  cover  a  little  and  letting  it 
fall  again  and  again. 

Suddenly  she  turned  to  Griggs  once  more  and  held 
the  book  out  to  him  with  a  smile. 

'I'm  not  an  autograph-hunter,'  she  said,  'but  will  you 
write  something  on  the  fly-leaf?  Just  a  word  or  two, 
without  your  name,  if  you  like.  Do  you  think  I'm 
very  sentimental?' 

She  smiled  again,  and  he  took  the  book  from  her  and 
produced  a  pencil. 

'It's  a  book  I  shall  not  throw  away/  she  went  on, 
'because  the  man  who  wrote  it  is  a  great  friend  of  mine, 
and  I  have  everything  he  has  ever  written.  So,  as  I 
shall  keep  it,  I  want  it  to  remind  me  that  you  and  I 
grew  to  know  each  other  better  on  this  voyage.' 

It  occurred  to  the  veteran  that  while  this  was  com 
plimentary  to  himself  it  was  not  altogether  promising 
for  Lushington,  who  was  the  old  friend  in  question.  A 
woman  who  loves  a  man  does  not  usually  ask  another 
to  write  a  line  in  that  man's  book.  Griggs  set  the  point 
of  the  pencil  on  the  fly-leaf  as  if  he  were  going  to  write; 
but  then  he  hesitated,  looked  up,  glanced  at  Margaret, 
and  at  last  leaned  back  in  the  seat,  as  if  in  deep  thought. 


94  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  iv 

'I  didn't  mean  to  give  you  so  much  trouble/  Margaret 
said,  still  smiling.  'I  thought  it  must  be  so  easy  for  a 
famous  author  like  you  to  write  half-a-dozen  words!' 

'A  "sentiment"  you  mean!'  Griggs  laughed  rather 
contemptuously,  and  then  was  grave  again. 

'No!'  Margaret  said,  a  little  disappointed.  'You  did 
not  understand  me.  Don't  write  anything  at  all.  Give 
me  back  the  book.' 

She  held  out  her  hand  for  it;  but  as  if  he  had  just 
made  up  his  mind,  he  put  his  pencil  to  the  paper  again, 
and  wrote  four  words  in  a  small  clear  hand.  She  leaned 
forwards  a  little  to  see  what  he  was  writing. 

'You  know  enough  Latin  to  read  that/  he  said,  as 
he  gave  the  book  back  to  her. 

She  read  the  words  aloud,  with  a  puzzled  expression. 

'"Credo  in  resurrectionem  mortuorum." '  She  looked 
at  him  for  some  explanation. 

'Yes/  he  said,  answering  her  unspoken  question. 
'"I  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  dead."3 

'It  means  something  especial  to  you  —  is  that  it?' 

'Yes.'  His  eyes  were  very  sad  again  as  they  met 
hers. 

'My  voice?'  she  asked.  'Some  one  —  who  sang  like 
me?  Who  died?' 

'Long  before  you  were  born/  he  answered  gently. 

There  was  another  little  pause  before  she  spoke  again, 
for  she  was  touched. 

'Thank  you/  she  said.    'Thank  you  for  writing  that.' 


CHAPTER  V 

MR.  VAN  TORP  arrived  in  London  alone,  with  one  small 
valise,  for  he  had  sent  his  man  with  his  luggage  to  the 
place  in  Derbyshire.  At  Euston  a  porter  got  him  a 
hansom,  and  he  bargained  with  the  cabman  to  take 
him  and  his  valise  to  the  Temple  for  eighteenpence,  a 
sum  which,  he  explained,  allowed  sixpence  for  the 
valise,  as  the  distance  could  not  by  any  means  be  made 
out  to  be  more  than  two  miles. 

Such  close  economy  was  to  be  expected  from  a  mil 
lionaire,  travelling  incognito;  what  was  more  surprising 
was  that,  when  the  cab  stopped  before  a  door  in  Hare 
Court  and  Mr.  Van  Torp  received  his  valise  from  the 
roof  of  the  vehicle,  he  gave  the  man  half-a-crown,  and 
said  it  was  'all  right.7 

'Now,  my  man/  he  observed,  'you've  not  only  got 
an  extra  shilling,  to  which  you  had  no  claim  whatever, 
but  you've  had  the  pleasure -of  a  surprise  which  you 
could  not  have  bought  for  that  money.' 

The  cabman  grinned  as  he  touched  his  hat  and  drove 
away,  and  Mr.  Van  Torp  took  his  valise  in  one  hand 
and  his  umbrella  in  the  other  and  went  up  the  dark 
stairs.  He  went  up  four  flights  without  stopping  to 
take  breath,  and  without  so  much  as  glancing  at  any 
of  the  names  painted  in  white  letters  on  the  small  black 

95 


96  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

boards  beside  the  doors  on  the  right  and  left  of  each 
landing. 

The  fourth  floor  was  the  last,  and  though  the  name 
on  the  left  had  evidently  been  there  a  number  of  years, 
for  the  white  lettering  was  of  the  tint  of  a  yellow  fog, 
it  was  still  quite  clear  and  legible. 

MR.  I.  BAMBERGER. 

That  was  the  name,  but  the  millionaire  did  not  look 
at  it  any  more  than  he  had  looked  at  the  others  lower 
down.  He  knew  them  all  by  heart.  He  dropped  his 
valise,  took  a  small  key  from  his  pocket,  opened  the 
door,  picked  up  his  valise  again,  and,  as  neither  hand 
was  free,  he  shut  the  door  with  his  heel  as  he  passed 
in,  and  it  slammed  behind  him,  sending  dismal  echoes 
down  the  empty  staircase. 

The  entry  was  almost  quite  dark,  for  it  was  past  six 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  late  in  March,  and  the  sky  was 
overcast;  but  there  was  still  light  enough  to  see  in  the 
large  room  on  the  left  into  which  Mr.  Van  Torp  carried 
his  things. 

It  was  a  dingy  place,  poorly  furnished,  but  some  one 
had  dusted  the  table,  the  mantelpiece,  and  the  small 
bookcase,  and  the  fire  was  laid  in  the  grate,  while  a 
bright  copper  kettle  stood  on  a  movable  hob.  Mr.  Van 
Torp  struck  a  match  and  lighted  the  kindling  before  he 
took  off  his  overcoat,  and  in  a  few  minutes  a  cheerful 
blaze  dispelled  the  gathering  gloom.  He  went  to  a 
small  old-fashioned  cupboard  in  a  corner  and  brought 
from  it  a  chipped  cup  and  saucer,  a  brown  teapot,  and  a 
cheap  japanned  tea-caddy,  all  of  which  he  set  on  the 


CHAP,  v  THE  PRIMADONNA  97 

table;  and  as  soon  as  the  fire  burned  brightly,  he  pushed 
the  movable  hob  round  with  his  foot  till  the  kettle  was 
over  the  flame  of  the  coals.  Then  he  took  off  his  over 
coat  and  sat  down  in  the  shabby  easy-chair  by  the 
hearth,  to  wait  till  the  water  boiled. 

His  proceedings,  his  manner,  and  his  expression 
would  have  surprised  the  people  who  had  been  his 
fellow-passengers  on  the  Leofric,  and  who  imagined 
Mr.  Van  Torp  driving  to  an  Olympian  mansion,  some 
where  between  Constitution  Hill  and  Sloane  Square,  to 
be  received  at  his  own  door  by  gravely  obsequious 
footmen  in  plush,  and  to  drink  Imperial  Chinese  tea 
from  cups  of  Old  Saxe,  or  Bleu  du  Roi,  or  Capo  di  Monte. 

Paul  Griggs,  having  tea  and  a  pipe  in  a  quiet  little 
hotel  in  Clarges  Street,  would  have  been  much  surprised 
if  he  could  have  seen  Rufus  Van  Torp  lighting  a  fire  for 
himself  in  that  dingy  room  in  Hare  Court.  Madame 
Margarita  da  Cordova,  waiting  for  an  expected  visitor 
in  her  own  sitting-room,  in  her  own  pretty  house  in 
Norfolk  Crescent,  would  have  been  very  much  surprised 
indeed.  The  sight  would  have  plunged  her  into  even 
greater  uncertainty  as  to  the  man's  real  character,  and 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  she  would  have  taken  his  mys 
terious  retreat  to  be  another  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence 
against  him  which  already  seemed  so  convincing.  She 
might  naturally  have  wondered,  too,  what  he  had  felt 
when  he  had  seen  that  board  beside  the  door,  and  she 
could  hardly  have  believed  that  he  had  gone  in  without 
so  much  as  glancing  at  the  yellowish  letters  that  formed 
the  name  of  Bamberger. 


98  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

But  he  seemed  quite  at  home  where  he  was,  and  not 
at  all  uncomfortable  as  he  sat  before  the  fire,  watching 
the  spout  of  the  kettle,  his  elbows  on  the  arms  of  the 
easy-chair  and  his  hands  raised  before  him,  with  the 
finger-tips  pressed  against  each  other,  in  the  attitude 
which,  with  most  men,  means  that  they  are  considering 
the  two  sides  of  a  question  that  is  interesting  without 
being  very  important. 

Perhaps  a  thoughtful  observer  would  have  noticed  at 
once  that  there  had  been  no  letters  waiting  for  him 
when  he  had  arrived,  and  would  have  inferred  either 
that  he  did  not  mean  to  stay  at  the  rooms  twenty-four 
hours,  or  that,  if  he  did,  he  had  not  chosen  to  let  any 
one  know  where  he  was. 

Presently  it  occurred  to  him  that  there  was  no  longer 
any  light  in  the  room  except  from  the  fire,  and  he  rose 
and  lit  the  gas.  The  incandescent  light  sent  a  raw 
glare  into  the  farthest  corners  of  the  large  room,  and 
just  then  a  tiny  wreath  of  white  steam  issued  from  the 
spout  of  the  kettle.  This  did  not  escape  Mr.  Van  Torp's 
watchful  eye,  but  instead  of  making  tea  at  once  he  looked 
at  his  watch,  after  which  he  crossed  the  room  to  the 
window  and  stood  thoughtfully  gazing  through  the 
panes  at  the  fast  disappearing  outlines  of  the  roofs  and 
chimney-pots  which  made  up  the  view  when  there  was 
daylight  outside.  He  did  not  pull  down  the  shade 
before  he  turned  back  to  the  fire,  perhaps  because  no 
one  could  possibly  look  in. 

But  he  poured  a  little  hot  water  into  the  teapot,  to 
scald  it,  and  went  to  the  cupboard  and  got  another  cup 


CHAP.  V  THE   PRIMADONNA  99 

and  saucer,  and  an  old  tobacco-tin  of  which  the  dingy 
label  was  half  torn  off,  and  which  betrayed  by  a  rattling 
noise  that  it  contained  lumps  of  sugar.  The  imaginary 
thoughtful  observer  already  mentioned  would  have  in 
ferred  from  all  this  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  resolved  to 
put  off  making  tea  until  some  one  came  to  share  it 
with  him,  and  that  the  some  one  might  take  sugar, 
though  he  himself  did  not;  and  further,  as  it  was  ex 
tremely  improbable,  on  the  face  of  it,  that  an  afternoon 
visitor  should  look  in  by  a  mere  chance,  in  the  hope  of 
finding  some  one  in  Mr.  Isidore  Bamberger's  usually 
deserted  rooms,  on  the  fourth  floor  of  a  dark  building 
in  Hare  Court,  the  observer  would  suppose  that  Mr. 
Van  Torp  was  expecting  some  one  to  come  and  see  him 
just  at  that  hour,  though  he  had  only  landed  in  Liver 
pool  that  day,  and  would  have  been  still  at  sea  if  the 
weather  had  been  rough  or  foggy. 

All  this  might  have  still  further  interested  Paul 
Griggs,  and  would  certainly  have  seemed  suspicious  to 
Margaret,  if  she  could  have  known  about  it. 

Five  minutes  passed,  and  ten,  and  the  kettle  was 
boiling  furiously,  and  sending  out  a  long  jet  of  steam 
over  the  not  very  shapely  toes  of  Mr.  Van  Torp's  boots, 
as  he  leaned  back  with  his  feet  on  the  fender.  He 
looked  at  his  watch  again  and  apparently  gave  up  the 
idea  of  waiting  any  longer,  for  he  rose  and  poured  out 
the  hot  water  from  the  teapot  into  one  of  the  cups,  as  a 
preparatory  measure,  and  took  off  the  lid  to  put  in  the 
tea.  But  just  as  he  had  opened  the  caddy,  he  paused 
and  listened.  The  door  of  the  room  leading  to  the  entry 


100  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

was  ajar,  and  as  he  stood  by  the  table  he  had  heard 
footsteps  on  the  stairs,  still  far  down,  but  mounting 
steadily. 

He  went  to  the  outer  door  and  listened.  There  was 
no  doubt  that  somebody  was  coming  up;  any  one  not 
deaf  could  have  heard  the  sound.  It  was  more  strange 
that  Mr.  Van  Torp  should  recognise  the  step,  for  the 
rooms  on  the  other  side  of  the  landing  were  occupied, 
and  a  stranger  would  have  thought  it  quite  possible  that 
the  person  who  was  coming  up  should  be  going  there. 
But  Mr.  Van  Torp  evidently  knew  better,  for  he  opened 
his  door  noiselessly  and  stood  waiting  to  receive  the 
visitor.  The  staircase  below  was  dimly  lighted  by  gas, 
but  there  was  none  at  the  upper  landing,  and  in  a  few 
seconds  a  dark  form  appeared,  casting  a  tall  shadow 
upwards  against  the  dingy  white  paint  of  the  wall. 
The  figure  mounted  steadily  and  came  directly  to  the 
open  door  —  a  lady  in  a  long  black  cloak  that  quite 
hid  her  dress.  She  wore  no  hat,  but  her  head  was 
altogether  covered  by  one  of  those  things  which  are 
neither  hoods  nor  mantillas  nor  veils,  but  which  serve 
women  for  any  of  the  three,  according  to  weather  and 
circumstances.  The  peculiarity  of  the  one  the  lady  wore 
was  that  it  cast  a  deep  shadow  over  her  face. 

'Come  in/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  withdrawing  into  the 
entry  to  make  way. 

She  entered  and  went  on  directly  to  the  sitting-room, 
while  he  shut  the  outer  door.  Then  he  followed  her, 
and  shut  the  second  door  behind  him.  She  was  stand 
ing  before  the  fire  spreading  her  gloved  hands  to  the 


CHAP,  v  THE   FJU'MAbONNA  101 


blaze,  as  if  she  were  cold!  The  gloves  were  white,  and 
they  fitted  very  perfectly.  As  he  came  near,  she  turned 
and  held  out  one  hand. 

'All  right?'  he  inquired,  shaking  it  heartily,  as  if  it 
had  been  a  man's. 

A  sweet  low  voice  answered  him. 

'Yes  —  all  right/  it  said,  as  if  nothing  could  ever  be 
wrong  with  its  possessor.  'But  you?'  it  asked  directly 
afterwards,  in  a  tone  of  sympathetic  anxiety. 

'I?  Oh  —  well-  Mr.  Van  Torp's  incomplete 

answer  might  have  meant  anything,  except  that  he  too 
was  'all  right.' 

'Yes,'  said  the  lady  gravely.  'I  read  the  telegram 
the  next  day.  Did  you  get  my  cable?  I  did  not  think 
you  would  sail.' 

'Yes,  I  got  your  cable.  Thank  you.  Well  —  I  did 
sail,  you  see.  Take  off  your  things.  The  water's  boil 
ing  and  we'll  have  tea  in  a  minute.' 

The  lady  undid  the  fastening  at  her  throat  so  that  the 
fur-lined  cloak  opened  and  slipped  a  little  on  her  white 
shoulders.  She  held  it  in  place  with  one  hand,  and 
with  the  other  she  carefully  turned  back  the  lace  hood 
from  her  face,  so  as  not  to  disarrange  her  hair.  Mr  .Van 
Torp  was  making  tea,  and  he  looked  up  at  her  over  the 
teapot. 

'I  dressed  for  dinner,'  she  said,  explaining. 

'Well,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  looking  at  her,  'I  should 
think  you  did ! ' 

There  was  real  admiration  in  his  tone,  though  it  was 
distinctly  reluctant. 


102  TB£   PKlMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

'I  thought  it  would 'save 'half 'an  hour  and  give  us 
more  time  together/  said  the  lady  simply. 

She  sat  down  in  the  shabby  easy-chair,  and  as  she 
did  so  the  cloak  slipped  and  lay  about  her  waist,  and 
she  gathered  one  side  of  it  over  her  knees.  Her  gown 
was  of  black  velvet,  without  so  much  as  a  bit  of  lace, 
except  at  the  sleeves,  and  the  only  ornament  she  wore 
was  a  short  string  of  very  perfect  pearls  clasped  round 
her  handsome  young  throat. 

She  was  handsome,  to  say  the  least.  If  tired  ghosts 
of  departed  barristers  were  haunting  the  dingy  room  in 
Hare  Court  that  night,  they  must  have  blinked  and 
quivered  for  sheer  pleasure  at  what  they  saw,  for  Mr. 
Van  Torp's  visitor  was  a  very  fine  creature  to  look  at; 
and  if  ghosts  can  hear,  they  heard  that  her  voice  was 
sweet  and  low,  like  an  evening  breeze  and  flowing  water 
in  a  garden,  even  in  the  Garden  of  Eden. 

She  was  handsome,  and  she  was  young;  and  above  all 
she  had  the  freshness,  the  uncontaminated  bloom,  the 
subdued  brilliancy  of  nature's  most  perfect  growing 
things.  It  was  in  the  deep  clear  eyes,  in  the  satin  sheen 
of  her  bare  shoulders  under  the  sordid  gaslight;  it  was 
in  the  strong  smooth  lips,  delicately  shaded  from  salmon 
colour  to  the  faintest  peach-blossom;  it  was  in  the  firm 
oval  of  her  face,  in  the  well-modelled  ear,  the  straight 
throat  and  the  curving  neck;  it  was  in  her  graceful 
attitude;  it  was  everywhere.  'No  doubt,'  the  ghosts 
might  have  said,  'there  are  more  beautiful  women  in 
England  than  this  one,  but  surely  there  is  none  more 
like  a  thoroughbred  and  a  Derby  winner ! ' 


CHAP,  v  THE  PRIMADONNA  103 

'You  take  sugar,  don't  you?'  asked  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
having  got  the  lid  off  the  old  tobacco-tin  with  some 
difficulty,  for  it  had  developed  an  inclination  to  rust 
since  it  had  last  been  moved. 

'One  lump,  please/  said  the  thoroughbred,  looking 
at  the  fire. 

'I  thought  I  remembered/  observed  the  millionaire. 
'The  tea's  good/  he  added,  'and  you'll  have  to  excuse 
the  cup.  And  there's  no  cream.' 

'I'll  excuse  anything/  said  the  lady,  'I'm  so  glad  to 
be  here!' 

'Well,  I'm  glad  to  see  you  too/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
giving  her  the  cup.  'Crackers?  I'll  see  if  the'  're  any 
in  the  cupboard.  I  forgot/ 

He  went  to  the  corner  again  and  found  a  small  tin  of 
biscuits,  which  he  opened  and  examined  under  gaslight. 

'Mouldy/  he  observed.  'Weevils  in  them,  too. 
Sorry.  Does  it  matter  much?' 

'Nothing  matters/  answered  the  lady,  sweet  and  low. 
'But  why  do  you  put  them  away  if  they  are  bad?  It 
would  be  better  to  burn  them  and  be  done  with  it.' 

He  was  taking  the  box  back  to  the  cupboard. 

'I  suppose  you're  right/  he  said  reluctantly.  'But 
it  always  seems  wicked  to  burn  bread,  doesn't  it?' 

'Not  when  it's  weevilly/  replied  the  thoroughbred, 
after  sipping  the  hot  tea. 

He  emptied  the  contents  of  the  tin  upon  the  coal  fire, 
and  the  room  presently  began  to  smell  of  mouldy  toast. 

'Besides/  he  said,  'it's  cruel  to  burn  weevils,  I  sup 
pose.  If  I'd  thought  of  that,  I'd  have  left  them  alone. 


104  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

It's  too  late  now.  They're  done  for,  poor  beasts!  I'm 
sorry.  I  don't  like  to  kill  things.' 

He  stared  thoughtfully  at  the  already  charred  re 
mains  of  the  holocaust,  and  shook  his  head  a  little.  The 
lady  sipped  her  tea  and  looked  at  him  quietly,  perhaps 
affectionately,  but  he  did  not  see  her. 

'You  think  I'm  rather  silly  sometimes,  don't  you?' 
he  asked,  still  gazing  at  the  fire. 

'No,'  she  answered  at  once.  'It's  never  silly  to  be 
kind,  even  to  weevils.' 

'Thank  you  for  thinking  so/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  in  an 
oddly  humble  tone,  and  he  began  to  drink  his  own  tea. 

If  Margaret  Donne  could  have  suddenly  found  herself 
perched  among  the  chimney-pots  on  the  opposite  roof, 
and  if  she  had  then  looked  at  his  face  through  the  win 
dow,  she  would  have  wondered  why  she  had  ever  felt 
a  perfectly  irrational  terror  of  him.  It  was  quite  plain 
that  the  lady  in  black  velvet  had  no  such  impression. 

'You  need  not  be  so  meek,'  she  said,  smiling. 

She  did  not  laugh  often,  but  sometimes  there  was  a 
ripple  in  her  fresh  voice  that  would  turn  a  man's  head. 
Mr.  Van  Torp  looked  at  her  in  a  rather  dull  way. 

'I  believe  I  feel  meek  when  I'm  with  you.  Especially 
just  now.' 

He  swallowed  the  rest  of  his  tea  at  a  gulp,  set  the 
cup  on  the  table,  and  folded  his  hands  loosely  together, 
his  elbows  resting  on  his  knees;  in  this  attitude  he  leaned 
forward  and  looked  at  the  burning  coals.  Again  his 
companion  watched  his  hard  face  with  affectionate 
interest. 


CHAP.  V  THE   PRIMADONNA  105 

'Tell  me  just  how  it  happened/  she  said.  'I  mean, 
if  it  will  help  you  at  all  to  talk  about  it.7 

'Yes.  You  always  help  me,'  he  answered,  and  then 
paused.  'I  think  I  should  like  to  tell  you  the  whole 
thing/  he  added  after  an  instant.  'Somehow,  I  never 
tell  anybody  much  about  myself.' 

'I  know.' 

She  bent  her  handsome  head  in  assent.  Just  then  it 
would  have  been  very  hard  to  guess  what  the  relations 
were  between  the  oddly  assorted  pair,  as  they  sat  a 
little  apart  from  each  other  before  the  grate.  Mr.  Van 
Torp  was  silent  now,  as  if  he  were  making  up  his  mind 
how  to  begin. 

In  the  pause,  the  lady  quietly  held  out  her  hand 
towards  him.  He  saw  without  turning  further,  and  he 
stretched  out  his  own.  She  took  it  gently,  and  then, 
without  warning,  she  leaned  very  far  forward,  bent  over 
it  and  touched  it  with  her  lips.  He  started  and  drew  it 
back  hastily.  It  was  as  if  the  leaf  of  a  flower  had 
settled  upon  it,  and  had  hovered  an  instant,  and  flut 
tered  away  in  a  breath  of  soft  air. 

'Please  don't!'  he  cried,  almost  roughly.  'There's 
nothing  to  thank  me  for.  I've  often  told  you  so.' 

But  the  lady  was  already  leaning  back  in  the  old 
easy-chair  again  as  if  she  had  done  nothing  at  all  unusual. 

'It  wasn't  for  myself/  she  said.  'It  was  for  all  the 
others,  who  will  never  know.' 

'Well,  I'd  rather  not/  he  answered.  'It's  not  worth 
all  that.  Now,  see  here!  I'm  going  to  tell  you  as  near 
as  I  can  what  happened,  and  when  you  know  you  can 


106  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

make  up  your  mind.  You  never  saw  but  one  side  of 
me  anyhow,  but  you've  got  to  see  the  other  sooner  or 
later.  No,  I  know  what  you're  going  to  say  —  all  that 
about  a  dual  nature,  and  Jekyll  and  Hyde,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  That  may  be  true  for  nervous  people,  but 
I'm  not  nervous.  Not  at  all.  I  never  was.  What  I 
know  is,  there  are  two  sides  to  everybody,  and  one's 
always  the  business  side.  The  other  may  be  anything. 
Sometimes  it's  good,  sometimes  it's  bad.  Sometimes  it 
cares  for  a  woman,  sometimes  it's  a  collector  of  art 
things,  Babylonian  glass,  and  Etruscan  toys  and  pre 
historic  dolls.  It  may  gamble,  or  drink,  or  teach  a 
Sunday  school,  or  read  Dante,  or  shoot,  or  fish,  or  any 
thing  that's  of  no  use.  But  one  side's  always  the 
business  side.  That's  certain.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp  paused,  and  looked  at  his  companion's 
empty  cup.  Seeing  that  he  was  going  to  get  up  hi  order 
to  give  her  more,  she  herself  rose  quickly  and  did  it  for 
herself.  He  sat  still  and  watched  her,  probably  because 
the  business  side  of  his  nature  judged  that  he  could  be 
of  no  use.  The  fur-lined  cloak  was  now  lying  in  the 
easy-chair,  and  there  was  nothing  to  break  the  sweeping 
lines  of  the  black  velvet  from  her  dazzling  shoulders  to 
her  waist,  to  her  knee,  to  her  feet.  Mr.  Van  Torp 
watched  her  in  silence,  till  she  sat  down  again. 

'You  know  me  well  enough  to  understand  that,'  he 
said,  going  on.  'My  outside's  my  business  side,  and 
that's  what  matters  most.  Now  the  plain  truth  is  this. 
My  engagement  to  Miss  Bamberger  was  just  a  business 
affair.  Bamberger  thought  of  it  first,  and  suggested  it 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  107 

to  me,  and  he  asked  her  if  she'd  mind  being  engaged  to 
me  for  a  few  weeks;  and  she  said  she  wouldn't  provided 
she  wasn't  expected  to  marry  me.  That  was  fair  and 
square,  anyway,  on  both  sides.  Wasn't  it?' 

'It  depends  on  why  you  did  it,'  said  the  lady,  going 
to  the  point  directly. 

'That  was  the  business  side/  answered  her  com 
panion.  'You  see,  a  big  thing  like  the  Nickel  Trust 
always  has  a  lot  of  enemies,  besides  a  heap  of  people 
who  want  to  get  some  of  it  cheap.  This  time  they  put 
their  heads  together  and  got  up  one  of  the  usual  stories. 
You  see,  Isidore  H.  Bamberger  is  the  president  and  I 
only  appear  as  a  director,  though  most  of  it's  mine.  So 
they  got  up  a  story  that  he  was  operating  on  his  own 
account  to  get  behind  me,  and  that  we  were  going  to 
quarrel  over  it,  and  there  was  going  to  be  a  slump,  and 
people  began  to  believe  it.  It  wasn't  any  use  talking 
to  the  papers.  We  soon  found  that  out.  Sometimes 
the  public  won't  believe  anything  it's  told,  and  some 
times  it  swallows  faster  than  you  can  feed  to  it.  I 
don't  know  why,  though  I've  had  a  pretty  long  expe 
rience,  but  I  generally  do  know  which  state  it's  in.  I 
feel  it.  That's  what's  called  business  ability.  It's  like 
fishing.  Any  old  fisherman  can  judge  in  half  an  hour 
whether  the  fish  are  going  to  bite  all  day  or  not.  If 
he's  wrong  once,  he'll  be  right  a  hundred  times.  Well, 
I  felt  talking  was  no  good,  and  so  did  Bamberger,  and 
the  shares  began  to  go  down  before  the  storm.  If  the 
big  slump  had  come  there 'd  have  been  a  heap  of  money 
lost.  I  don't  say  we  didn't  let  the  shares  drop  a  couple 


108  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

of  points  further  than  they  needed  to,  and  Bamberger 
bought  any  of  it  that  happened  to  be  lying  around,  and 
the  more  he  bought  the  quicker  it  wanted  to  go  down, 
because  people  said  there  was  going  to  be  trouble  and 
an  investigation.  But  if  we'd  gone  on,  lots  of  people 
would  have  been  ruined,  and  yet  we  didn't  just  see  how 
to  stop  it  sharp,  till  Bamberger  started  his  scheme. 
Do  you  understand  all  that?' 

The  lady  nodded  gravely. 

'You  make  it  clear/  she  said. 

'Well,  I  thought  it  was  a  good  scheme/  continued 
her  companion,  'and  as  the  girl  said  she  didn't  mind, 
we  told  we  were  engaged.  That  settled  things  pretty 
quick.  The  shares  went  up  again  in  forty-eight  hours, 
and  as  we'd  bought  for  cash  we  made  the  points,  and 
the  other  people  were  short  and  lost.  But  when  every 
thing  was  all  right  again  we*  got  tired  of  being  engaged, 
Miss  Bamberger  and  I;  and  besides,  there  was  a  young 
fellow  she'd  a  fancy  for,  and  he  kept  writing  to  her  that 
he'd  kill  himself,  and  that  made  her  nervous,  you  see, 
and  she  said  if  it  went  on  another  day  she  knew  she'd 
have  appendicitis  or  something.  So  we  were  going  to 
announce  that  the  engagement  was  broken.  And  the 
very  night  before  - 

He  paused.  Not  a  muscle  of  the  hard  face  moved, 
there  was  not  a  change  in  the  expression  of  the  tre 
mendous  mouth,  there  was  not  a  tremor  in  the  tone; 
but  the  man  kept  his  eyes  steadily  on  the  fire. 

'Oh,  well,  she's  dead  now,  poor  thing/  he  said  pres 
ently.  'And  that's  what  I  wanted  to  tell  you.  I 


CHAP.  V  THE   PRIMADONNA  109 

suppose  it's  not  a  very  pretty  story,  is  it?  But  I'll  tell 
you  one  thing.  Though  we  made  a  little  by  the  turn  of 
the  market,  we  saved  a  heap  of  small  fry  from  losing  all 
they'd  put  in.  If  we'd  let  the  slump  come  and  then 
bought  we  should  have  made  a  pile;  but  then  we  might 
have  had  difficulty  in  getting  the  stock  up  to  anywhere 
near  par  again  for  some  time.' 

'Besides/  said  the  lady  quietly,  'you  would  not  have 
ruined  all  those  little  people  if  you  could  help  it.' 

'You  think  I  wouldn't?'  He  turned  his  eyes  to  her 
now. 

'I'm  sure  you  would  not/  said  the  lady  with  perfect 
confidence. 

'I  don't  know,  I'm  sure/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp  in 
a  doubtful  tone.  'Perhaps  I  wouldn't.  But  it  would 
only  have  been  business  if  I  had.  It's  not  as  if  Bam- 
berger  and  I  had  started  a  story  on  purpose  about  our 
quarrelling  in  order  to  make  things  go  down.  I  draw 
the  line  there.  That's  downright  dishonest,  I  call  it. 
But  if  we'd  just  let  things  slide  and  taken  advantage 
of  what  happened,  it  would  only  have  been  business 
after  all.  Except  for  that  doubt  about  getting  back  to 
par/  he  added,  as  an  afterthought.  'But  then  I  should 
have  felt  whether  it  was  safe  or  not.' 

'Then  why  did  you  not  let  things  slide,  as  you  call  it?' 

'I  don't  know,  I'm  sure.  Maybe  I  was  soft-hearted. 
We  don't  always  know  why  we  do  things  in  business. 
There's  a  great  deal  more  in  the  weather  where  big 
money  is  moving  than  you  might  think.  For  instance, 
there  was  never  a  great  revolution  in  winter.  But  as 


110  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

for  making  people  lose  their  money,  those  who  can't 
keep  it  ought  not  to  have  it.  They're  a  danger  to 
society,  and  half  the  time  it's  they  who  upset  the  market 
by  acting  like  lunatics.  They  get  a  lot  of  sentimental 
pity  sometimes,  those  people;  but  after  all,  if  they  didn't 
try  to  cut  in  without  capital,  and  play  the  game  without 
knowing  the  rules,  business  would  be  much  steadier 
and  there  would  be  fewer  panics.  They're  the  people 
who  get  frightened  and  run,  not  we.  The  fact  is,  they 
ought  never  to  have  been  there.  That's  why  I  believe 
in  big  things  myself/ 

He  paused,  having  apparently  reached  the  end  of  his 
subject. 

'Were  you  with  the  poor  girl  when  she  died?'  asked 
the  lady  presently. 

'No.  She'd  dined  with  a  party  and  was  in  their  box, 
and  they  were  the  last  people  who  saw  her.  You  read 
about  the  explosion.  She  bolted  from  the  box  in  the 
dark,  I  was  told,  and  as  she  couldn't  be  found  after 
wards  they  concluded  she  had  rushed  out  and  taken  a 
cab  home.  It  seemed  natural,  I  suppose.7 

'Who  found  her  at  last?' 

'A  man  called  Griggs  —  the  author,  you  know.  He 
carried  her  to  the  manager's  room,  still  alive.  They 
got  a  doctor,  and  as  she  wanted  to  see  a  woman,  they 
sent  for  Cordova,  the  singer,  from  her  dressing-room, 
and  the  girl  died  in  her  arms.  They  said  it  was  heart 
failure,  from  shock/ 

'It  was  very  sad/ 

'I'm  sorry  for  poor  Bamberger/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  111 

thoughtfully.  'She  was  his  only  child,  and  he  doted  on 
her.  I  never  saw  a  man  so  cut  up  as  he  looked.  I 
wanted  to  stay,  but  he  said  the  mere  sight  of  me  drove 
him  crazy,  poor  fellow,  and  as  I  had  business  over  here 
and  my  passage  was  taken,  I  just  sailed.  Sometimes 
the  kindest  thing  one  can  do  is  to  get  out.  So  I  did. 
But  I'm  very  sorry  for  him.  I  wish  I  could  do  any 
thing  to  make  it  easier  for  him.  It  was  nobody's  fault, 
I  suppose,  though  I  do  think  the  people  she  was  with 
might  have  prevented  her  from  rushing  out  in  the  dark/ 

'They  were  frightened  themselves.  How  could  any 
one  be  blamed  for  her  death  ?' 

1  Exactly.  But  if  any  one  could  be  made  responsible, 
I  know  Bamberger  would  do  for  him  in  some  way.  He's 
a  resentful  sort  of  man  if  any  one  does  him  an  injury. 
Blood  for  blood  is  Bamberger 's  motto,  every  time. 
One  thing  I'm  sure  of.  He'll  run  down  whoever  was 
responsible  for  that  explosion,  and  he'll  do  for  him, 
whoever  he  is,  if  it  costs  one  million  to  get  a  conviction. 
I  wouldn't  like  to  be  the  fellow!' 

'I  can  understand  wishing  to  be  revenged  for  the 
death  of  one's  only  child,'  said  the  lady  thoughtfully. 
'  Cannot  you?' 

The  American  turned  his  hard  face  to  her. 

'Yes,'  he  said,  'I  can.     It's  only  human,  after  all.' 

She  sighed  and  looked  into  the  fire.  She  was  married, 
but  she  was  childless,  and  that  was  a  constant  regret  to 
her.  Mr.  Van  Torp  knew  it  and  understood. 

'To  change  the  subject/  he  said  cheerfully,  'I  sup 
pose  you  need  money,  don't  you?7 


112  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

'Oh  yes!    Indeed  I  do!' 

Her  momentary  sadness  had  already  disappeared, 
and  there  was  almost  a  ripple  in  her  tone  again  as  she 
answered. 

'How  much?'  asked  the  millionaire  smiling. 

She  shook  her  head  and  smiled  too;  and  as  she  met 
his  eyes  she  settled  herself  and  leaned  far  back  in  the 
shabby  easy-chair.  She  was  wonderfully  graceful  and 
good  to  look  at  in  her  easy  attitude. 

'I'm  afraid  to  tell  you  how  much!'  She  shook  her 
head  again,  as  she  answered. 

'Well/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp  in  an  encouraging  tone, 
'I've  brought  some  cash  in  my  pocket,  and  if  it  isn't 
enough  I'll  get  you  some  more  to-morrow.  But  I  won't 
give  you  a  cheque.  It's  too  compromising.  I  thought 
of  that  before  I  left  New  York,  so  I  brought  some  Eng 
lish  notes  from  there.' 

'How  thoughtful  you  always  are  for  me!' 

'It's  not  much  to  do  for  a  woman  one  likes.  But 
I'm  sorry  if  I've  brought  too  little.  Here  it  is,  any 
way.' 

He  produced  a  large  and  well-worn  pocket-book,  and 
took  from  it  a  small  envelope,  which  he  handed  to  her. 

'Tell  me  how  much  more  you'll  need/  he  said,  'and 
I'll  give  it  to  you  to-morrow.  I'll  put  the  notes  between 
the  pages  of  a  new  book  and  leave  it  at  your  door.  He 
wouldn't  open  a  package  that  was  addressed  to  you 
from  a  bookseller's,  would  he?' 

'No/  answered  the  lady,  her  expression  changing  a 
little,  'I  think  he  draws  the  line  at  the  bookseller.' 


CHAP,  v  THE   PRIMADONNA  113 

'You  see,  this  was  meant  for  you/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp. 
'  There  are  your  initials  on  it.' 

She  glanced  at  the  envelope,  and  saw  that  it  was 
marked  in  pencil  with  the  letters  M.  L.  in  one  corner. 

'Thank  you/  she  said,  but  she  did  not  open  it. 

'You'd  better  count  the  notes/  suggested  the  mil 
lionaire.  'I'm  open  to  making  mistakes  myself.' 

The  lady  took  from  the  envelope  a  thin  flat  package 
of  new  Bank  of  England  notes,  folded  together  in  four. 
Without  separating  them  she  glanced  carelessly  at  the 
first,  which  was  for  a  hundred  pounds,  and  then  counted 
the  others  by  the  edges.  She  counted  four  after  the 
first,  and  Mr.  Van  Torp  watched  her  face  with  evident 
amusement. 

'You  need  more  than  that,  don't  you?'  he  asked, 
when  she  had  finished. 

'A  little  more,  perhaps/  she  said  quietly,  though  she 
could  not  quite  conceal  her  disappointment,  as  she 
folded  the  notes  and  slipped  them  into  the  envelope 
again.  'But  I  shall  try  to  make  this  last.  Thank  you 
very  much.' 

'I  like  you/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'You're  the  real 
thing.  They'd  call  you  a  chief's  daughter  in  the 
South  Seas.  But  I'm  not  so  mean  as  all  that.  I  only 
thought  you  might  need  a  little  cash  at  once.  That's 
all.' 

A  loud  knocking  at  the  outer  door  prevented  the  lady 
from  answering. 

She  looked  at  Mr.  Van  Torp  in  surprise. 

'What's  that?'  she  asked,  rather  anxiously. 


114  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

'I  don't  know/  he  answered.  'He  couldn't  guess 
that  you  were  here,  could  he?' 

'Oh  no!    That's  quite  out  of  the  question!' 

'Then  I'll  open  the  door/  said  the  millionaire,  and  he 
left  the  sitting-room. 

The  lady  had  not  risen,  and  she  still  leaned  back  in 
her  seat.  She  idly  tapped  the  knuckles  of  her  gloved 
hand  with  the  small  envelope. 

The  knocking  was  repeated,  she  heard  the  outer  door 
opened,  and  the  sound  of  voices  followed  directly. 

'Oh!'  Mr.  Van  Torp  exclaimed  in  a  tone  of  contemp 
tuous  surprise,  'it's  you,  is  it?  Well,  I'm  busy  just 
now.  I  can't  see  you  till  to-morrow.' 

'My  business  will  not  keep  till  to-morrow/  answered 
an  oily  voice  in  a  slightly  foreign  accent. 

At  the  very  first  syllables  the  lady  rose  quickly  to 
her  feet,  and  resting  one  hand  on  the  table  she  leant 
forward  in  the  direction  of  the  door,  with  an  expres 
sion  that  was  at  once  eager  and  anxious,  and  yet  quite 
fearless. 

'What  you  call  your  business  is  going  to  wait  my 
convenience/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'You'll]  find  me 
here  to-morrow  morning  until  eleven  o'clock.' 

From  the  sounds  the  lady  judged  that  the  American 
now  attempted  to  shut  the  door  hi  his  visitor's  face, 
but  that  he  was  hindered  and  that  a  scuffle  followed. 

'Hold  him!'  cried  the  oily  voice  in  a  tone  of  command. 
'  Bring  him  in !  Lock  the  door ! ' 

It  was  clear  enough  that  the  visitor  had  not  come 
alone,  and  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  been  overpowered. 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  115 

The  lady  bit  her  salmon-coloured  lip  angrily  and  con 
temptuously. 

A  moment  later  a  tall  heavily-built  man  with  thick 
fair  hair,  a  long  moustache,  and  shifty  blue  eyes,  rushed 
into  the  room  and  did  not  stop  till  there  was  only  the 
small  table  between  him  and  the  lady. 

'I've  caught  you!  What  have  you  to  say?'  he 
asked. 

'To  you?    Nothing!' 

She  deliberately  turned  her  back  on  her  husband, 
rested  one  elbow  on  the  mantelpiece  and  set  one  foot 
upon  the  low  fender,  drawing  up  her  velvet  gown  over 
her  instep.  But  a  moment  later  she  heard  other  foot 
steps  in  the  room,  and  turned  her  head  to  see  Mr.  Van 
Torp  enter  the  room  between  two  big  men  who  were 
evidently  ex-policemen.  The  millionaire,  having  failed 
to  shut  the  door  in  the  face  of  the  three  men,  had  been 
too  wise  to  attempt  any  further  resistance. 

The  fair  man  glanced  down  at  the  table  and  saw  the 
envelope  with  his  wife's  initials  lying  beside  the  tea 
things.  She  had  dropped  it  there  when  she  had  risen 
to  her  feet  at  the  sound  of  his  voice.  He  snatched  it 
away  as  soon  as  he  saw  the  pencilled  letters  on  it,  and 
in  a  moment  he  had  taken  out  the  notes  and  was  looking 
over  them. 

'I  should  like  you  to  remember  this,  please,'  he  said, 
addressing  the  two  men  who  had  accompanied  him. 
'This  envelope  is  addressed  to  my  wife,  under  her  ini 
tials,  in  the  handwriting  of  Mr.  Van  Torp.  Am  I  right 
in  taking  it  for  your  handwriting?'  he  inquired,  in  a 


116  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

disagreeably  polite  tone,  and  turning  towards  the  mil 
lionaire. 

'You  are/  answered  the  American,  in  a  perfectly 
colourless  voice  and  without  moving  a  muscle.  '  That's 
my  writing.' 

'And  this  envelope/  continued  the  husband,  holding 
up  the  notes  before  the  men,  'contains  notes  to  the 
amount  of  four  thousand  one  hundred  pounds.' 

'Five  hundred  pounds,  you  mean/  said  the  lady 
coldly. 

'See  for  yourself!'  retorted  the  fair  man,  raising  his 
eyebrows  and  holding  out  the  notes. 

'That's  correct/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  smiling  and 
looking  at  the  lady.  'Four  thousand  one  hundred. 
Only  the  first  one  was  for  a  hundred,  and  the  rest  were 
thousands.  I  meant  it  for  a  little  surprise,  you  see.' 

'Oh,  how  kind!  How  dear  and  kind!'  cried  the  lady 
gratefully,  and  with  amazing  disregard  of  her  husband's 
presence. 

The  two  ex-policemen  had  not  expected  anything  so 
interesting  as  this,  and  their  expressions  were  worthy 
of  study.  They  had  been  engaged,  through  a  private 
agency,  to  assist  and  support  an  injured  husband,  and 
afterwards  to  appear  as  witnesses  of  a  vulgar  clandes 
tine  meeting,  as  they  supposed.  It  was  not  the  first 
time  they  had  been  employed  on  such  business,  but 
they  did  not  remember  ever  having  had  to  deal  with 
two  persons  who  exhibited  such  hardened  indifference; 
and  though  the  incident  of  the  notes  was  not  new  to 
them,  they  had  never  been  in  a  case  where  the  amount 


CHAP.  V  THE   PRIMADONNA  117 

of  cash  received  by  the  lady  at  one  time  was  so  very 
large. 

'It  is  needless/  said  the  fair  man,  addressing  them 
both,  'to  ask  what  this  money  was  for.' 

'Yes/  said  Mr.  Van  Torp  coolly.  'You  needn't 
bother.  But  I'll  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  notes  are  not  yours,  and  that  I'd  like  to  see  them 
put  back  into  that  envelope  and  laid  on  that  table 
before  you  go.  You  broke  into  my  house  by  force 
anyhow.  If  you  take  valuables  away  with  you,  which 
you  found  here,  it's  burglary  in  England,  whatever  it 
may  be  in  your  country;  and  if  you  don't  know  it,  these 
two  professional  gentlemen  do.  So  you  just  do  as  I 
tell  you,  if  you  want  to  keep  out  of  gaol.' 

The  fair  man  had  shown  a  too  evident  intention  of 
slipping  the  envelope  into  his  own  pocket,  doubtless  to 
be  produced  in  evidence,  but  Mr.  Van  Torp's  final 
argument  seemed  convincing. 

'I  have  not  the  smallest  intention  of  depriving  my 
wife  of  the  price  of  my  honour,  sir.  Indeed,  I  am  rather 
flattered  to  find  that  you  both  value  it  so  highly.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp's  hard  face  grew  harder,  and  a  very 
singular  light  came  into  his  eyes.  He  moved  forwards 
till  he  was  close  to  the  fair  man. 

'None  of  that!'  he  said  authoritatively.  'If  you  say 
another  word  against  your  wife  in  my  hearing  I'll  make 
it  the  last  you  ever  said  to  anybody.  Now  you'd  better 
be  gone  before  I  telephone  for  the  police.  Do  you 
understand?' 

The  two  ex-policemen  employed  by  a  private  agency 


118  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  V 

thought  the  case  was  becoming  more  and  more  inter 
esting;  but  at  the  same  time  they  were  made  vaguely 
nervous  by  Mr.  Van  Torp's  attitude. 

'I  think  you  are  threatening  me/  said  the  fair  man, 
drawing  back  a  step,  and  leaving  the  envelope  on  the 
table. 

'No/  answered  his  adversary,  'I'm  warning  you  off 
my  premises,  and  if  you  don't  go  pretty  soon  I'll  tele 
phone  for  the  police.  Is  that  a  threat?' 

The  last  question  was  addressed  to  the  two  men. 

'No,  sir/  answered  one  of  them. 

'It  would  hardly  be  to  your  advantage  to  have  more 
witnesses  of  my  wife's  presence  here/  observed  the  fair 
man  coldly,  'but  as  I  intend  to  take  her  home  we  may 
as  well  go  at  once.  Come,  Maud!  The  carriage  is 
waiting.' 

The  lady,  whose  name  was  now  spoken  for  the  first 
time  since  she  had  entered  Mr.  Van  Torp's  lodging,  had 
not  moved  from  the  fireplace  since  she  had  taken  up 
her  position  there.  Women  are  as  clever  as  Napoleon 
or  Julius  Csesar  in  selecting  strong  positions  when  there 
is  to  be  an  encounter,  and  a  fireplace,  with  a  solid  man 
telpiece  to  lean  against,  to  strike,  to  cry  upon  or  to 
cling  to,  is  one  of  the  strongest.  The  enemy  is  thus 
reduced  to  prowling  about  the  room  and  handling  knick- 
knacks  while  he  talks,  or  smashing  them  if  he  is  of  a 
violent  disposition. 

The  lady  now  leant  back  against  the  dingy  marble 
shelf  and  laid  one  white-gloved  arm  along  it,  in  an 
attitude  that  was  positively  regal.  Her  right  hand 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  119 

might  appropriately  have  been  toying  with  the  orb  of 
empire  on  the  mantelpiece,  and  her  left,  which  hung 
down  beside  her,  might  have  loosely  held  the  sceptre. 
Mr.  Van  Torp,  who  often  bought  large  pictures,  was 
reminded  of  one  recently  offered  to  him  in  America, 
representing  an  empress.  He  would  have  bought  the 
portrait  if  the  dealer  could  have  remembered  which 
empress  it  represented,  but  the  fact  that  he  could  not 
had  seemed  suspicious  to  Mr.  Van  Torp.  It  was  clearly 
the  man's  business  to  know  empresses  by  sight. 

From  her  commanding  position  the  Lady  Maud  re 
fused  her  husband's  invitation  to  go  home  with  him. 

'I  shall  certainly  not  go  with  you,'  she  said.  l Be 
sides,  I'm  dining  early  at  the  Turkish  Embassy  and  we 
are  going  to  the  play.  You  need  not  wait  for  me.  I'll 
take  care  of  myself  this  evening,  thank  you.' 

'This  is  monstrous!'  cried  the  fair  man,  and  with  a 
peculiarly  un-English  gesture  he  thrust  his  hand  into 
his  thick  hair. 

The  foreigner  in  despair  has  always  amused  the  gen 
uine  Anglo-Saxon.  Lady  Maud's  lip  did  not  curl  con 
temptuously  now,  she  did  not  raise  her  eyebrows,  nor 
did  her  eyes  flash  with  scorn.  On  the  contrary,  she 
smiled  quite  frankly,  and  the  sweet  ripple  was  in  her 
voice,  the  ripple  that  drove  some  men  almost  crazy. 

'You  needn't  make  such  a  fuss,'  she  said.  'It's  quite 
absurd,  you  know.  Mr.  Van  Torp  is  an  old  friend  of 
mine,  and  you  have  known  him  ever  so  long,  and  he  is 
a  man  of  business.  You  are,  are  you  not?'  she  asked, 
looking  to  the  American  for  assent. 


120  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  V 

'I'm  generally  thought  to  be  that/  he  answered. 

'Very  well.  I  came  here,  to  Mr.  Van  Torp's  rooms 
in  the  Temple,  before  going  to  dinner,  because  I  wished 
to  see  him  about  a  matter  of  business,  in  what  is  a  place 
of  business.  It's  all  ridiculous  nonsense  to  talk  about 
having  caught  me  —  and  worse.  That  money  is  for 
a  charity,  and  I  am  going  to  take  it  before  your  eyes, 
and  thank  Mr.  Van  Torp  for  being  so  splendidly  gen 
erous.  Now  go,  and  take  those  persons  with  you,  and 
let  me  hear  no  more  of  this!' 

Thereupon  Lady  Maud  came  forward  from  the  man 
telpiece  and  deliberately  took  from  the  table  the  en 
velope  which  contained  four  thousand  one  hundred 
pounds  in  new  Bank  of  England  notes;  and  she  put  it 
into  the  bosom  of  her  gown,  and  smiled  pleasantly  at 
her  husband. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  watched  her  with  genuine  admiration, 
and  when  she  looked  at  him  and  nodded  her  thanks 
again,  he  unconsciously  smiled  too,  and  answered  by  a 
nod  of  approval. 

The  fair-haired  foreign  gentleman  turned  to  his  two 
ex-policemen  with  considerable  dignity. 

'You  have  heard  and  seen,'  he  said  impressively. 
'I  shall  expect  you  to  remember  all  this  when  you  are 
in  the  witness-box.  Let  us  go.'  He  made  a  sweeping 
bow  to  his  wife  and  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'I  wish  you  an 
agreeable  evening,'  he  said. 

Thereupon  he  marched  out  of  the  room,  followed  by 
his  men,  who  each  made  an  awkward  bow  at  nothing  in 
particular  before  going  out.  Mr.  Van  Torp  followed  them 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  121 

at  some  distance  towards  the  outer  door,  judging  that  as 
they  had  forced  their  way  in  they  could  probably  find 
their  way  out.  He  did  not  even  go  to  the  outer  thresh 
old,  for  the  last  of  the  three  shut  the  door  behind  him. 

When  the  millionaire  came  back  Lady  Maud  was 
seated  in  the  easy-chair,  leaning  forward  and  looking 
thoughtfully  into  the  fire.  Assuredly  no  one  would  have 
suspected  from  her  composed  face  that  anything  unusual 
had  happened.  She  glanced  at  her  friend  when  he 
came  in,  but  did  not  speak,  and  he  began  to  walk  up 
and  down  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  with  his  hands 
behind  him. 

'You've  got  pretty  good  nerves/  he  said  presently. 

'Yes/  answered  Lady  Maud,  still  watching  the  coals, 
'they  really  are  rather  good.' 

A  long  silence  followed,  during  which  she  did  not 
move  and  Mr.  Van  Torp  steadily  paced  the  floor. 

'I  didn't  tell  a  fib,  either/  she  said  at  last.  'It's 
charity,  in  its  way.' 

'Certainly/  assented  her  friend.  'What  isn't  either 
purchase-money  or  interest,  or  taxes,  or  a  bribe,  or  a 
loan,  or  a  premium,  or  a  present,  or  blackmail,  must  be 
charity,  because  it  must  be  something,  and  it  isn't 
anything  else  you  can  name.' 

'A  present  may  be  a  charity/  said  Lady  Maud,  still 
thoughtful. 

'Yes/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'It  may  be,  but  it 
isn't  always/ 

He  walked  twice  the  length  of  the  room  before  he 
spoke  again. 


122  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  v 

'Do  you  think  it's  really  to  be  war  this  time?'  he 
asked,  stopping  beside  the  table.  'Because  if  it  is,  I'll 
see  a  lawyer  before  I  go  to  Derbyshire.7 

Lady  Maud  looked  up  with  a  bright  smile.  Clearly 
she  had  been  thinking  of  something  compared  with 
which  the  divorce  court  was  a  delightful  contrast. 

'I  don't  know/  she  answered.  'It  must  come  sooner 
or  later,  because  he  wants  to  be  free  to  marry  that 
woman,  and  as  he  has  not  the  courage  to  cut  my  throat, 
he  must  divorce  me  —  if  he  can ! ' 

'I've  sometimes  thought  he  might  take  the  shorter 
Way,'  said  Van  Torp. 

'He?'  Lady  Maud  almost  laughed,  but  her  com 
panion  looked  grave. 

'There's  a  thing  called  homicidal  mania/  he  said. 
'Didn't  he  shoot  a  boy  in  Russia  a  year  ago?' 

'A  young  man  —  one  of  the  beaters.  But  that  was 
an  accident.7 

'I'm  not  so  sure.  How  about  that  poor  dog  at  the 
Theobalds7  last  September?7 

'He  thought  the  creature  was  mad/  Lady  Maud 
explained. 

'  He  knows  as  well  as  you  do  that  there's  no  rabies  in 
the  British  Isles/  objected  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'Count 
Leven  never  liked  that  dog  for  some  reason,  and  he  shot 
him  the  first  time  he  got  a  chance.  He's  always  killing 
things.  Some  day  he'll  kill  you,  I'm  afraid.' 

'I  don't  think  so/  answered  the  lady  carelessly.  'If 
he  does,  I  hope  he'll  do  it  neatly!  I  should  hate  to  be 
maimed  or  mangled.' 


CHAP.  V  THE  PRIMADONNA  123 

'Do  you  know  it  makes  me  uncomfortable  to  hear 
you  talk  like  that?  I  wish  you  wouldn't!  You  can't 
deny  that  your  husband's  half  a  lunatic,  anyway.  He 
was  behaving  like  one  here  only  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
ago,  and  it's  no  use  denying  it.' 

'But  I'm  not  denying  anything!' 

'No,  I  know  you're  not,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'If  you 
don't  know  how  crazy  he  is,  I  don't  suppose  any  one 
else  does.  But  your  nerves  are  better  than  mine,  as  I 
told  you.  The  idea  of  killing  anything  makes  me  un 
comfortable,  and  when  it  comes  to  thinking  that  he 
really  might  murder  you  some  day  —  well,  I  can't 
stand  it,  that's  all!  If  I  didn't  know  that  you  lock  your 
door  at  night  I  shouldn't  sleep,  sometimes.  You  do 
lock  it,  always,  don't  you?' 

'Oh  yes!' 

'Be  sure  you  do  to-night.  I  wonder  whether  he  is  in 
earnest  about  the  divorce  this  time,  or  whether  the 
whole  scene  was  just  bluff,  to  get  my  money.' 

'I  don't  know,'  answered  Lady  Maud,  rising.  'He 
needs  money,  I  believe,  but  I'm  not  sure  that  he  would 
try  to  get  it  just  in  that  way.' 

'Too  bad?     Even  for  him?' 

'Oh  dear,  no!    Too  simple!     He's  a  tortuous  person/ 

'He  tried  to  pocket  those  notes  with  a  good  deal  of 
directness!'  observed  Mr.  Van  Torp. 

'Yes.  That  was  an  opportunity  that  turned  up 
unexpectedly,  but  he  didn't  know  it  would.  How  could 
he?  He  didn't  come  here  expecting  to  find  thousands 
of  pounds  lying  about  on  the  table !  It  was  easy  enough 


124  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  V 

to  know  that  I  was  here,  of  course.  I  couldn't  go  out 
of  my  own  house  on  foot,  in  a  dinner-gown,  and  pick  up 
a  hansom,  could  I?  I  had  one  called  and  gave  the 
address,  and  the  footman  remembered  it  and  told  my 
husband.  There's  nothing  more  foolish  than  making 
mysteries  and  giving  the  cabman  first  one  address  and 
then  another.  If  Boris  is  really  going  to  bring  a  suit, 
the  mere  fact  that  there  was  no  concealment  as  to  where 
I  was  going  this  evening  would  be  strong  evidence, 
wouldn't  it?  Evidence  he  cannot  deny,  too,  since  he 
must  have  learnt  the  address  from  the  footman,  who 
heard  me  give  it!  And  people  who  make  no  secret  of  a 
meeting  are  not  meeting  clandestinely,  are  they?' 

'You  argue  that  pretty  well,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
smiling. 

'And  besides/  rippled  Lady  Maud's  sweet  voice,  as 
she  shook  out  the  folds  of  her  black  velvet,  'I  don't  care.' 

Her  friend  held  up  the  fur-lined  cloak  and  put  it  over 
her  shoulders.  She  fastened  it  at  the  neck  and  then 
turned  to  the  fire  for  a  moment  before  leaving. 

'Rufus/  she  said  gravely,  after  a  moment's  pause, 
and  looking  down  at  the  coals,  'you're  an  angel.' 

'The  others  in  the  game  don't  think  so,'  answered 
Mr.  Van  Torp. 

'No  one  was  ever  so  good  to  a  woman  as  you've  been 
to  me,'  said  Maud. 

And  all  at  once  the  joyful  ring  had  died  away  from 
her  voice  and  there  was  another  tone  in  it  that  was 
sweet  and  low  too,  but  sad  and  tender  and  grateful,  all 
at  once. 


CHAP,  v  THE  PRIMADONNA  125 

'There's  nothing  to  thank  me  for/  answered  Mr.  Van 
Torp.  'I've  often  told  you  so.  But  I  have  a  good 
deal  of  reason  to  be  grateful  to  you  for  all  you've  given 
me.' 

'Nonsense!'  returned  the  lady,  and  the  sadness  was 
gone  again,  but  not  all  the  tenderness.  'I  must  be 
going,'  she  added  a  moment  later,  turning  away  from 
the  fire. 

'I'll  take  you  to  the  Embassy  in  a  hansom,'  said  the 
millionaire,  slipping  on  his  overcoat. 

'No.  You  mustn't  do  that  —  we  should  be  sure  to 
meet  some  one  at  the  door.  Are  you  going  anywhere 
in  particular?  I'll  drop  you  wherever  you  like,  and 
then  go  on.  It  will  give  us  a  few  minutes  more  together.' 

'Goodness  knows  we  don't  get  too  many!' 

'No,  indeed !' 

So  the  two  went  down  the  dismal  stairs  of  the  house 
in  Hare  Court  together. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  position  of  a  successful  lyric  primadonna  with 
regard  to  other  artists  and  the  rest  of  the  world  is 
altogether  exceptional,  and  is  not  easy  to  explain.  Her 
value  for  purposes  of  advertisement  apparently  exceeds 
that  of  any  other  popular  favourite,  not  to  mention  the 
majority  of  royal  personages.  A  respectable  publisher 
has  been  known  to  bring  out  a  book  in  which  he  did  not 
believe,  solely  because  a  leading  lyric  soprano  promised 
him  to  say  in  an  interview  that  it  was  the  book  of  the 
year.  Countless  brands  of  cigars,  cigarettes,  wines  and 
liquors,  have  been  the  fashion  with  the  flash  crowd 
that  frequents  public  billiard-rooms  and  consumes  un 
limited  tobacco  and  drink,  merely  because  some  famous 
'Juliet'  or  ' Marguerite'  has  ' consented'  to  lend  her 
name  to  the  articles  in  question ;  and  half  the  grog-shops 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  display  to  the  admiring 
street  the  most  alarming  pink  and  white  caricatures,  or 
monstrously  enlarged  photographs,  of  the  three  or  four 
celebrated  lyric  sopranos  who  happen  to  be  before  the 
public  at  any  one  time.  In  the  popular  mind  those 
artists  represent  something  which  they  themselves  do 
not  always  understand.  There  is  a  legend  about  each; 
she  is  either  an  angel  of  purity  and  light,  or  a  beautiful 
monster  of  iniquity;  she  has  turned  the  heads  of  kings 

126 


CHAP.  VI  THE  PRIMADONNA  127 

-  'kings'  in  a  vaguely  royal  plural  —  completely  round 
on  their  shoulders,  or  she  has  built  out  of  her  earnings 
a  hospital  for  crippled  children;  the  watery-sentimental 
eye  of  the  flash  crowd  in  its  cups  sees  in  her  a  Phryne, 
a  Mrs.  Fry,  or  a  Saint  Cecilia.  Goethe  said  that  every 
man  must  be  either  the  hammer  or  the  anvil;  the  bil 
liard-room  public  is  sure  that  every  primadonna  is  a 
siren  or  a  martyred  wife,  or  else  a  public  benefactress, 
unless  she  is  all  three  by  turns,  which  is  even  more 
interesting. 

In  any  case,  the  reporters  are  sure  that  every  one 
wants  to  know  just  what  she  thinks  about  everything. 
In  the  United  States,  for  instance,  her  opinion  on  political 
matters  is  often  asked,  and  is  advertised  with  '  scare- 
heads  '  that  would  stop  a  funeral  or  arrest  the  attention 
of  a  man  on  his  way  to  the  gallows. 

Then,  too,  she  has  her  'following'  of  ' girls/  thousands 
of  whom  have  her  photograph,  or  her  autograph,  or 
both,  and  believe  in  her,  and  are  ready  to  scratch  out 
the  eyes  of  any  older  person  who  suggests  that  she  is 
not  perfection  in  every  way,  or  that  to  be  a  primadonna 
like  her  ought  not  to  be  every  girl's  highest  ambition. 
They  not  only  worship  her,  but  many  of  them  make 
real  sacrifices  to  hear  her  sing;  for  most  of  them  are 
anything  but  well  off,  and  to  hear  an  opera  means 
living  without  little  luxuries,  and  sometimes  without 
necessaries,  for  days  together.  Their  devotion  to  their 
idol  is  touching  and  true;  and  she  knows  it  and  is  good- 
natured  in  the  matter  of  autographs  for  them,  and 
talks  about  'my  matinee  girls'  to  the  reporters,  as  if 


128  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

those  eleven  thousand  virgins  and  more  were  all  her 
younger  sisters  and  nieces.  An  actress,  even  the  most 
gifted,  has  no  such  '  following/  The  greatest  dramatic 
sopranos  that  ever  sing  Brunhilde  and  Kundry  enjoy 
no  such  popularity.  It  belongs  exclusively  to  the  night 
ingale  primadonnas,  whose  voices  enchant  the  ear  if 
they  do  not  always  stir  the  blood.  It  may  be  explicable, 
but  no  explanation  is  at  all  necessary,  since  the  fact 
cannot  be  disputed. 

To  this  amazing  popularity  Margaret  Donne  had  now 
attained;  and  she  was  known  to  the  matinee  girls' 
respectful  admiration  as  Madame  Cordova,  to  the  public 
generally  and  to  her  comrades  as  Cordova,  to  sentimental 
paragraph-writers  as  Fair  Margaret,  and  to  her  friends 
as  Miss  Donne,  or  merely  as  Margaret.  Indeed,  from 
the  name  each  person  gave  her  in  speaking  of  her,  it 
was  easy  to  know  the  class  to  which  each  belonged. 

She  had  bought  a  house  in  London,  because  in  her 
heart  she  still  thought  England  the  finest  country  in 
the  world,  and  had  never  felt  the  least  desire  to  live 
anywhere  else.  She  had  few  relations  left  and  none 
whom  she  saw;  for  her  father,  the  Oxford  scholar,  had 
not  had  money,  and  they  all  looked  with  disapproval 
on  the  career  she  had  chosen.  Besides,  she  had  been 
very  little  in  England  since  her  parents'  death.  Her 
mother's  American  friend,  the  excellent  Mrs.  Rushmore, 
who  had  taken  her  under  her  wing,  was  now  in  Versailles, 
where  she  had  a  house,  and  Margaret  actually  had  the 
audacity  to  live  alone,  rather  than  burden  herself  with 
a  tiresome  companion. 


CHAP,  vi  THE   PRIMADONNA  129 

Her  courage  in  doing  so  was  perhaps  mistaken,  con 
sidering  what  the  world  is  and  what  it  generally  thinks 
of  the  musical  and  theatrical  professions;  and  Mrs. 
Rushmore,  who  was  quite  powerless  to  influence  Mar 
garet's  conduct,  did  not  at  all  approve  of  it.  The  girl's 
will  had  always  been  strong,  and  her  immense  success 
had  so  little  weakened  her  belief  in  herself,  or  softened 
her  character,  that  she  had  grown  almost  too  indepen 
dent.  The  spirit  of  independence  is  not  a  fault  in 
women,  but  it  is  a  defect  in  the  eyes  of  men.  Darwin 
has  proved  that  the  dominant  characteristic  of  male 
animals  is  vanity;  and  what  is  to  become  of  that  if 
women  show  that  they  can  do  without  us?  If  the 
emancipation  of  woman  had  gone  on  as  it  began  when 
we  were  boys,  we  should  by  this  time  be  importing  wives 
for  our  sons  from  Timbuctoo  or  the  Friendly  Islands. 
Happily,  women  are  practical  beings  who  rarely  stray 
far  from  the  narrow  path  along  which  usefulness  and 
pleasure  may  still  go  hand  in  hand;  for  considering  how 
much  most  women  do  that  is  useful,  the  amount  of 
pleasure  they  get  out  of  life  is  perfectly  amazing;  and 
when  we  try  to  keep  up  with  them  in  the  chase  after 
amusement  we  are  surprised  at  the  number  of  useful 
things  they  accomplish  without  effort  in  twenty-four 
hours. 

But,  indeed,  women  are  to  us  very  like  the  moon, 
which  has  shown  the  earth  only  one  side  of  herself 
since  the  beginning,  though  she  has  watched  and  studied 
our  world  from  all  its  sides  through  uncounted  ages. 
We  men  are  alternately  delighted,  humiliated,  and  terri- 


130  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VI 

fied  when  women  anticipate  our  wishes,  perceive  our 
weaknesses,  and  detect  our  shortcomings,  whether  we 
be  frisky  young  colts  in  the  field  or  sober  stagers  plod 
ding  along  between  the  matrimonial  shafts  in  harness 
and  blinkers.  We  pride  ourselves  on  having  the  strength 
to  smash  the  shafts,  shake  off  the  harness,  and  kick  the 
cart  to  pieces  if  we  choose,  and  there  are  men  who  can 
and  do.  But  the  man  does  not  live  who  knows  what 
the  dickens  women  are  up  to  when  he  is  going  quietly 
along  the  road,  as  a  good  horse  should.  Sometimes 
they  are  driving  us,  and  then  there  is  no  mistake  about 
it;  and  sometimes  they  are  just  sitting  in  the  cart  and 
dozing,  and  we  can  tell  that  they  are  behind  us  by 
their  weight;  but  very  often  we  are  neither  driven  by 
them  nor  are  we  dragging  them,  and  we  really  have  not 
the  faintest  idea  where  they  are,  so  that  we  are  reduced 
to  telling  ourselves,  with  a  little  nervousness  which  we 
do  not  care  to  acknowledge,  that  it  is  noble  and  beautiful 
to  trust  what  we  love. 

A  part  of  the  great  feminine  secret  is  the  concealment 
of  that  independence  about  which  there  has  been  so 
much  talk  in  our  time.  As  for  suffrage,  wherever  there 
is  such  a  thing,  the  woman  who  does  not  vote  always 
controls  far  more  men's  votes  than  the  woman  who 
goes  to  the  polls,  and  has  only  her  own  vote  to  give. 

Margaret,  the  primadonna,  did  not  want  to  vote  for 
or  against  anything;  but  she  was  a  little  too  ready  to 
assert  that  she  could  and  would  lead  her  own  life  as  she 
pleased,  without  danger  to  her  good  name,  because  she 
had  never  done  anything  to  be  ashamed  of.  The  natural 


CHAP.  VI  THE  PRIMADONNA  131 

consequence  was  that  she  was  gradually  losing  something 
which  is  really  much  more  worth  having  than  common 
place,  technical  independence.  Her  friend  Lushington 
realised  the  change  as  soon  as  she  landed,  and  it  hurt 
him  to  see  it,  because  it  seemed  to  him  a  great  pity 
that  what  he  had  thought  an  ideal,  and  therefore  a 
natural  manifestation  of  art,  should  be  losing  the  fine 
outlines  that  had  made  it  perfect  to  his  devoted  gaze. 
But  this  was  not  all.  His  rather  over-strung  moral 
sense  was  offended  as  well  as  his  artistic  taste.  He  felt 
that  Margaret  was  blunting  the  sensibilities  of  her 
feminine  nature  and  wronging  a  part  of  herself,  and 
that  the  delicate  bloom  of  girlhood  was  opening  to  a 
blossom  that  was  somewhat  too  evidently  strong,  a 
shade  too  vivid  and  more  brilliant  than  beautiful. 

There  were  times  when  she  reminded  him  of  his 
mother,  and  those  were  some  of  the  most  painful  mo 
ments  of  his  present  life.  It  is  true  that  compared 
with  Madame  Bonanni  in  her  prime,  as  he  remembered 
her,  Margaret  was  as  a  lily  of  the  valley  to  a  giant 
dahlia;  yet  when  he  recalled  the  sweet  and  healthy 
English  girl  he  had  known  and  loved  in  Versailles  three 
years  ago,  the  vision  was  delicate  and  fairy-like  beside 
the  strong  reality  of  the  successful  primadonna.  She 
was  so  very  sure  of  herself  now,  and  so  fully  persuaded 
that  she  was  not  accountable  to  any  one  for  her  doings, 
her  tastes,  or  the  choice  of  her  friends!  If  not  actually 
like  Madame  Bonanni,  she  was  undoubtedly  beginning 
to  resemble  two  or  three  of  her  famous  rivals  in  the 
profession  who  were  nearer  to  her  own  age.  Her  taste 


132  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

did  not  run  in  the  direction  of  white  fox  cloaks,  named 
diamonds,  and  imperial  jade  plates;  she  did  not  use  a 
solid  gold  toothbrush  with  emeralds  set  in  the  handle, 
like  Ismail  Pacha;  bridge  did  not  amuse  her  at  all,  nor 
could  she  derive  pleasure  from  playing  at  Monte  Carlo; 
she  did  not  even  keep  an  eighty-horse-power  motor-car 
worth  five  thousand  pounds.  Paul  Griggs,  who  was 
old-fashioned,  called  motor-cars  'sudden-death  carts/ 
and  Margaret  was  inclined  to  agree  with  him.  She 
cared  for  none  of  these  things. 

Nevertheless  there  was  a  quiet  thoroughgoing  luxury 
in  her  existence,  an  unseen  private  extravagance,  such 
as  Rufus  Van  Torp,  the  millionaire,  had  never  dreamt 
of.  She  had  first  determined  to  be  a  singer  in  order  to 
support  herself,  because  she  had  been  cheated  of  a 
fortune  by  old  Alvah  Moon;  but  before  she  had  actually 
made  her  debut  a  handsome  sum  had  been  recovered 
for  her,  and  though  she  was  not  exactly  what  is  now 
called  rich,  she  was  at  least  extremely  well  off,  apart 
from  her  professional  earnings,  which  were  very  large 
indeed.  In  the  certainty  that  if  her  voice  failed  she 
would  always  have  a  more  than  sufficient  income  for 
the  rest  of  her  life,  and  considering  that  she  was  not 
under  the  obligation  of  supporting  a  number  of  poor 
relations,  it  was  not  surprising  that  she  should  spend  a 
great  deal  of  money  on  herself. 

It  is  not  every  one  who  can  be  lavish  without  going  a 
little  beyond  the  finely-drawn  boundary  which  divides 
luxury  from  extravagance;  for  useless  profusion  is  by 
nature  as  contrary  to  what  is  aesthetic  as  fat  in  the 


CHAP,  vi  THE  PRIMADONNA  133 

wrong  place,  and  is  quite  as  sure  to  be  seen.  To  spend 
well  what  rich  people  are  justified  in  expending  over 
and  above  an  ample  provision  for  the  necessities  and 
reasonable  comforts  of  a  large  existence  is  an  art  in 
itself,  and  the  modest  muse  of  good  taste  loves  not  the 
rich  man  for  his  riches,  nor  the  successful  primadonna 
for  the  thousands  she  has  a  right  to  throw  away  if  she 
likes. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  vaguely  understood  this,  without  at  all 
guessing  how  the  great  artist  spent  her  money.  He 
had  understood  at  least  enough  to  hinder  him  from 
trying  to  dazzle  her  in  the  beginning  of  the  New  York 
season,  when  he  had  brought  siege  against  her. 

A  week  after  her  arrival  in  London,  Margaret  was 
alone  at  her  piano  and  Lushington  was  announced. 
Unlike  the  majority  of  musicians  in  real  fiction  she  had 
not  been  allowing  her  fingers  to  '  wander  over  the  keys/ 
a  relaxation  that  not  seldom  leads  to  outer  darkness, 
where  the  consecutive  fifth  plays  hide-and-seek  with 
the  falling  sub-tonic  to  superinduce  gnashing  of  teeth 
in  them  that  hear.  Margaret  was  learning  her  part  in 
the  Elisir  d'Amore,  and  instead  of  using  her  voice  she 
was  whistling  from  the  score  and  playing  the  accom 
paniment.  The  old  opera  was  to  be  revived  during  the 
coming  season  with  her  and  the  great  Pompeo  Stromboli, 
and  she  was  obliged  to  work  hard  to  have  it  ready. 

The  music-room  had  a  polished  wooden  floor,  and  the 
furniture  consisted  chiefly  of  a  grand  piano  and  a  dozen 
chairs.  The  walls  were  tinted  a  pale  green;  there  were 
no  curtains  at  the  windows,  because  they  would  have 


134  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

deadened  sound,  and  a  very  small  wood  fire  was  burning 
in  an  almost  miniature  fireplace  quite  at  the  other  end 
of  the  room.  The  sun  had  not  quite  set  yet,  and  as  the 
blinds  were  still  open,  a  lurid  glare  came  in  from  the 
western  sky,  over  the  houses  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  wide  square.  There  had  been  a  heavy  shower,  but 
the  streets  were  already  drying.  One  shaded  electric 
lamp  stood  on  the  desk  of  the  piano,  and  the  rest  of  the 
room  was  illuminated  by  the  yellowish  daylight. 

Margaret  was  very  much  absorbed  in  her  work,  and 
did  not  hear  the  door  open;  but  the  servant  came 
slowly  towards  her,  purposely  making  his  steps  heard 
on  the  wooden  floor  in 'order  to  attract  her  attention. 
When  she  stopped  playing  and  whistling,  and  looked 
round,  the  man  said  that  Mr.  Lushington  was  down 
stairs. 

'Ask  him  to  come  up/  she  answered,  without  hesita 
tion. 

She  rose  from  the  piano,  went  to  the  window  and 
looked  out  at  the  smoky  sunset. 

Lushington  entered  the  room  in  a  few  moments  and 
saw  only  the  outline  of  her  graceful  figure,  as  if  she 
were  cut  out  in  black  against  the  glare  from  the  big 
window.  She  turned,  and  a  little  of  the  shaded  light 
from  the  piano  fell  upon  her  face,  just  enough  to  show 
him  her  expression,  and  though  her  glad  smile  welcomed 
him,  there  was  anxiety  in  her  brown  eyes.  He  came 
forward,  fair  and  supernaturally  neat,  as  ever,  and  much 
more  self-possessed  than  in  former  days.  It  was  not 
their  first  meeting  since  she  had  landed,  for  he  had 


CHAP.  VI  THE  PRIMADONNA  135 

been  to  see  her  late  in  the  afternoon  on  the  day  of  her 
arrival,  and  she  had  expected  him;  but  she  had  felt  a 
sort  of  constraint  in  his  manner  then,  which  was  new 
to  her,  and  they  had  talked  for  half  an  hour  about 
indifferent  things.  Moreover,  he  had  refused  a  second 
cup  of  tea,  which  was  a  sure  sign  that  something  was 
wrong.  So  she  had  asked  him  to  come  again  a  week 
later,  naming  the  day,  and  she  had  been  secretly  dis 
appointed  because  he  did  not  protest  against  being  put 
off  so  long.  She  wondered  what  had  happened,  for  his 
letters,  his  cable  to  her  when  she  had  left  America,  and 
the  flowers  he  had  managed  to  send  on  board  the 
steamer,  had  made  her  believe  that  he  had  not  changed 
since  they  had  parted  before  Christmas. 

As  she  was  near  the  piano  she  sat  down  on  the  stool, 
while  he  took  a  small  chair  and  established  himself  near 
the  corner  of  the  instrument,  at  the  upper  end  of  the 
keyboard.  The  shaded  lamp  cast  a  little  light  on  both 
their  faces,  as  the  two  looked  at  each  other,  and  Mar 
garet  realised  that  she  was  not  only  very  fond  of  him, 
but  that  his  whole  existence  represented  something  she 
had  lost  and  wished  to  get  back,  but  feared  that  she 
could  never  have  again.  For  many  months  she  had 
not  felt  like  her  old  self  till  a  week  ago,  when  he  had 
come  to  see  her  after  she  had  landed. 

They  had  been  in  love  with  each  other  before  she 
had  begun  her  career,  and  she  would  have  married  him 
then,  but  a  sort  of  quixotism,  which  was  highly  honour 
able  if  nothing  else,  had  withheld  him.  He  had  felt 
that  his  mother's  son  had  no  right  to  marry  Margaret 


136  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VI 

Donne,  though  she  had  told  him  as  plainly  as  a  modest 
girl  could  that  she  was  not  of  the  same  opinion.  Then 
had  come  Logotheti's  mad  attempt  to  carry  her  off  out 
of  the  theatre,  after  the  dress  rehearsal  before  her  debut, 
and  Madame  Bonanni  and  Lushington  between  them 
had  spirited  her  away  just  in  time.  After  that  it  had 
been  impossible  for  him  to  keep  up  the  pretence  of 
avoiding  her,  and  a  sort  of  intimacy  had  continued, 
which  neither  of  them  quite  admitted  to  be  love,  while 
neither  would  have  called  it  mere  friendship. 

The  most  amazing  part  of  the  whole  situation  was 
that  Margaret  had  continued  to  see  Logotheti  as  if  he 
had  not  actually  tried  to  carry  her  off  in  his  motor-car, 
very  much  against  her  will.  And  in  spite  of  former 
jealousies  and  a  serious  quarrel  Logotheti  and  Lushington 
spoke  to  each  other  when  they  met.  Possibly  Lush 
ington  consented  to  treat  him  civilly  because  the  plot 
for  carrying  off  Margaret  had  so  completely  failed  that 
its  author  had  got  himself  locked  up  on  suspicion  of 
being  a  fugitive  criminal.  Lushington,  feeling  that  he 
had  completely  routed  his  rival  on  that  occasion,  could 
afford  to  be  generous.  Yet  the  man  of  letters,  who  was 
a  born  English  gentleman  on  his  father's  side,  and  who 
was  one  altogether  by  his  bringing  up,  was  constantly 
surprised  at  himself  for  being  willing  to  shake  hands 
with  a  Greek  financier  who  had  tried  to  run  away  with 
an  English  girl;  and  possibly,  in  the  complicated  work 
ings  of  his  mind  and  conflicting  sensibilities,  half  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  half  Southern  French,  his  present  conduct 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  Margaret  Donne  had  somehow 


CHAP.  VI  THE  PRIMADONNA  137 

ceased  to  be  a  'nice  English  girl'  when  she  joined  the 
cosmopolitan  legion  that  manoeuvres  on  the  international 
stage  of  ' Grand  Opera.'  How  could  a  'nice  English 
girl'  remain  herself  if  she  associated  daily  with  such 
people  as  Pompeo  Stromboli,  Schreiermeyer,  Herr  Tie- 
fenbach  and  Signorina  Baci-Roventi,  the  Italian  con 
tralto  who  could  pass  for  a  man  so  well  that  she  was 
said  to  have  fought  a  real  duel  with  sabres  and  wounded 
her  adversary  before  he  discovered  that  she  was  the 
very  lady  he  had  lately  left  for  another  —  a  regular 
Mademoiselle  de  Maupin!  Had  not  Lushington  once 
seen  her  kiss  Margaret  on  both  cheeks  in  a  moment  of 
enthusiastic  admiration?  He  was  not  the  average  young 
man  who  falls  in  love  with  a  singer,  either;  he  knew  the 
stage  and  its  depths  only  too  well,  for  he  had  his  own 
mother's  life  always  before  him,  a  perpetual  reproach. 

Though  Margaret  had  at  first  revolted  inwardly 
against  the  details  of  her  professional  surroundings,  she 
had  grown  used  to  them  by  sure  and  fatal  degrees, 
and  things  that  would  once  have  disgusted  her  were 
indifferent  to  her  now.  Men  who  have  been  educated 
in  conditions  of  ordinary  refinement  and  who  have 
volunteered  in  the  ranks  or  gone  to  sea  before  the  mast 
have  experienced  something  very  like  what  befell 
Margaret;  but  men  are  not  delicately  nurtured  beings 
whose  bloom  is  damaged  by  the  rough  air  of  reality, 
and  the  camp  and  the  forecastle  are  not  the  stage.  Per 
haps  nothing  that  is  necessary  shocks  really  sensible 
people;  it  is  when  disagreeable  things  are  perfectly 
useless  and  quite  avoidable  —  in  theory  —  that  they 


138  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

are  most  repugnant  to  men  like  Edmund  Lushington. 
He  had  warned  Margaret  of  what  was  in  store  for  her, 
before  she  had  taken  the  final  step;  but  he  had  not 
warned  himself  that  in  spite  of  her  bringing-up  she 
might  get  used  to  it  all  and  end  by  not  resenting  it  any 
more  than  the  rest  of  the  professionals  with  whom  she 
associated.  It  was  this  that  chilled  him. 

'I  hope  I'm  not  interrupting  your  work/  he  said  as 
he  sat  down. 

'My  work?' 

'I  heard  you  studying  when  they  let  me  in.' 

'Oh!' 

His  voice  sounded  very  indifferent,  and  a  pause 
followed  Margaret's  mild  ejaculation. 

'It's  rather  a  thankless  opera  for  the  soprano,  I  always 
think/  he  observed.  'The  tenor  has  it  all  his  own  way.' 

'The  Eli#\r  (TAmaref 

'Yes.' 

'I've  not  rehearsed  it  yet/  said  Margaret  rather 
drearily.  'I  don't  know.' 

He  evidently  meant  to  talk  of  indifferent  things 
again,  as  at  their  last  meeting,  and  she  felt  that  she 
was  groping  in  the  dark  for  something  she  had  lost. 
There  was  no  sympathy  in  his  voice,  no  interest,  and 
she  was  inclined  to  ask  him  plainly  what  was  the  matter; 
but  her  pride  hindered  her  still,  and  she  only  looked  at 
him  with  an  expression  of  inquiry.  He  laid  his  hand 
on  the  corner  of  the  piano,  and  his  eyes  rested  on  the 
shaded  lamp  as  if  it  attracted  him.  Perhaps  he  won 
dered  why  he  had  nothing  to  say  to  her,  and  why  she 


CHAP,  vi  THE  PRIMADONNA  139 

was  unwilling  to  help  the  conversation  a  little,  since 
her  new  part  might  be  supposed  to  furnish  matter  for 
a  few  commonplace  phrases.  The  smoky  sunset  was 
fading  outside  and  the  room  was  growing  dark. 

'When  do  the  rehearsals  begin?'  he  asked  after  a 
long  interval,  and  as  if  he  was  quite  indifferent  to  the 
answer. 

'When  Stromboli  comes,  I  suppose/ 

Margaret  turned  on  the  piano  stool,  so  as  to  face  the 
desk,  and  she  quietly  closed  the  open  score  and  laid  it 
on  the  little  table  on  her  other  side,  as  if  not  caring  to 
talk  of  it  any  more,  but  she  did  not  turn  to  him  again. 

'You  had  a  great  success  in  New  York,'  he  said,  after 
some  time. 

To  this  she  answered  nothing,  but  she  shrugged  her 
shoulders  a  little,  and  though  he  was  not  looking  directly 
at  her  he  saw  the  movement,  and  was  offended  by  it. 
Such  a  little  shrug  was  scarcely  a  breach  of  manners, 
but  it  was  on  the  verge  of  vulgarity  in  his  eyes,  because 
he  was  persuaded  that  she  had  begun  to  change  for  the 
worse.  He  had  already  told  himself  that  her  way  of 
speaking  was  not  what  it  had  been  last  year,  and  he 
felt  that  if  the  change  went  on  she  would  set  his  teeth 
on  edge  some  day;  and  that  he  was  growing  more  and 
more  sensitive,  while  she  was  continually  becoming  less 
so. 

Margaret  could  not  have  understood  that,  and  would 
have  been  hurt  if  he  had  tried  to  explain  it.  She  was 
disappointed,  because  his  letters  had  made  her  think 
that  she  was  going  to  find  him  just  as  she  had  left  him, 


140  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VI 

as  indeed  he  had  been  till  the  moment  when  he  saw  her 
after  her  arrival;  but  then  he  had  changed  at  once. 
He  had  been  disappointed  then,  as  she  was  now,  and 
chilled,  as  she  was  now;  he  had  felt  that  he  was  shrinking 
from  her  then,  as  she  now  shrank  from  him.  He  suffered 
a  good  deal  in  his  quiet  way,  for  he  had  never  known 
any  woman  who  had  moved  him  as  she  once  had;  but 
she  suffered  too,  and  in  a  much  more  resentful  way. 
Two  years  of  maddening  success  had  made  her  very 
sure  that  she  had  a  prime  right  to  anything  she  wanted 
—  within  reason!  If  she  let  him  alone  he  would  sit 
out  his  half-hour's  visit,  making  an  idle  remark  now 
and  then,  and  he  would  go  away;  but  she  would  not 
let  him  do  that.  It  was  too  absurd  that  after  a  long  and 
affectionate  intimacy  they  should  sit  there  in  the  soft 
light  and  exchange  platitudes. 

'Tom/  she  said,  suddenly  resolving  to  break  the  ice, 
'we  have  been  much  too  good  friends  to  behave  in  this 
way  to  each  other.  If  something  has  come  between  us, 
I  think  you  ought  to  tell  me  —  don't  you?' 

'I  wish  I  could/  Lushington  answered,  after  a  mo 
ment's  hesitation. 

'If  you  know,  you  can/  said  Margaret,  taking  the 
upper  hand  and  meaning  to  keep  it. 

'That  does  not  quite  follow.' 

'Oh  yes,  it  does/  retorted  Margaret  energetically. 
'I'll  tell  you  why.  If  it's  anything  on  your  side,  it's 
not  fair  and  honest  to  keep  it  from  me  after  writing  to 
me  as  you  have  written  all  winter.  But  if  it's  the  other 
way,  there's  nothing  you  can  possibly  know  about  me 


CHAP.  VI  THE   PRIMADONNA  141 

which  you  cannot  tell  me,  and  if  you  think  there  is, 
then  some  one  has  been  telling  you  what  is  not  true.' 

'It's  nothing  against  you;  I  assure  you  it's  not.' 

'Then  there  is  a  woman  in  the  case.  Why  should 
you  not  say  so  frankly?  We  are  not  bound  to  each 
other  in  any  way,  I'm  sure.  I  believe  I  once  asked  you 
to  marry  me,  and  you  refused!'  She  laughed  rather 
sharply.  'That  does  not  constitute  an  engagement!' 

'You  put  the  point  rather  brutally,  I  think,'  said 
Lushington. 

'Perhaps,  but  isn't  it  quite  true?  It  was  not  said  in 
so  many  words,  but  you  knew  I  meant  it,  and  but  for 
a  quixotic  scruple  of  yours  we  should  have  been  married. 
I  remember  asking  you  what  we  were  making  ourselves 
miserable  about,  since  we  both  cared  so  much.  It  was 
at  Versailles,  the  last  time  we  walked  together,  and  we 
had  stopped,  and  I  was  digging  little  round  holes  in 
the  road  with  my  parasol.  I'm  not  going  to  ask  you 
again  to  marry  me,  so  there  is  no  reason  in  the  world 
why  you  should  behave  differently  to  me  if  you  have 
fallen  in  love  with  some  one  else.' 

'I'm  not  in  love  with  any  one,'  said  Lushington 
sharply. 

'Then  something  you  have  heard  about  me  has 
changed  you  in  spite  of  what  you  say,  and  I  have  a 
right  to  know  what  it  is,  because  I've  done  nothing  I'm 
ashamed  of.' 

'I've  not  heard  a  word  against  you,'  he  answered, 
almost  angrily.  'Why  do  you  imagine  such  things?' 

'Because  I'm  honest  enough  to  own  that  your  friend- 


142  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

ship  has  meant  a  great  deal  to  me,  even  at  a  distance; 
and  as  I  see  that  it  has  broken  its  neck  at  some  fence 
or  other,  I'm  natural  enough  to  ask  what  the  jump  was 
like!' 

He  would  not  answer.  He  only  looked  at  her  sud 
denly  for  an  instant,  with  a  slight  pinching  of  the  lids, 
and  his  blue  eyes  glittered  a  little;  then  he  turned  away 
with  a  displeased  air. 

'Am  I  just  or  not?'  Margaret  asked,  almost  sternly. 

'Yes,  you  are  just/  he  said,  for  it  was  impossible  not 
to  reply. 

'And  do  you  think  it  is  just  to  me  to  change  your 
manner  altogether,  without  giving  me  a  reason?  I 
don't!' 

'You  will  force  me  to  say  something  I  would  rather 
not  say.' 

'That  is  what  I  am  trying  to  do/  Margaret  retorted. 

'Since  you  insist  on  knowing  the  truth/  answered 
Lushington,  yielding  to  what  was  very  like  necessity, 
'I  think  you  are  very  much  changed  since  I  saw  you 
last.  You  do  not  seem  to  me  the  same  person.' 

For  a  moment  Margaret  looked  at  him  with  something 
like  wonder,  and  her  lips  parted,  though  she  said  nothing. 
Then  they  met  again  and  shut  very  tight,  while  her 
brown  eyes  darkened  till  they  looked  almost  black;  she 
turned  a  shade  paler,  too,  and  there  was  something 
almost  tragic  in  her  face. 

'I'm  sorry/  Lushington  said,  watching  her,  'but  you 
made  me  tell  you.' 

'Yes/  she  answered  slowly.    'I  made  you  tell  me, 


CHAP.  VI  THE  PRIMADONNA  143 

and  I'm  glad  I  did.  So  I  have  changed  as  much  as  that, 
have  I?  In  two  years!' 

She  folded  her  hands  on  the  little  shelf  of  the  empty 
music  desk,  bent  far  forwards  and  looked  down  between 
the  polished  wooden  bars  at  the  strings  below,  as  if 
she  were  suddenly  interested  in  the  mechanism  of  the 
piano. 

Lushington  turned  his  eyes  to  the  darkening  windows, 
and  both  sat  thus  in  silence  for  some  time. 

'Yes/  she  repeated  at  last,  'I'm  glad  I  made  you  tell 
me.  It  explains  everything  very  well.' 

Still  Lushington  said  nothing,  and  she  was  still 
examining  the  strings.  Her  right  hand  stole  to  the 
keys,  and  she  pressed  down  one  note  so  gently  that  it 
did  not  strike;  she  watched  the  little  hammer  that  rose 
till  it  touched  the  string  and  then  fell  back  into  its 
place. 

'You  said  I  should  change — I  remember  your  words.7 
Her  voice  was  quiet  and  thoughtful,  whatever  she  felt. 
'I  suppose  there  is  something  about  me  now  that  grates 
on  your  nerves.' 

There  was  no  resentment  in  her  tone,  nor  the  least 
intonation  of  sarcasm.  But  Lushington  said  nothing; 
he  was  thinking  of  the  time  when  he  had  thought  her 
an  ideal  of  refined  girlhood,  and  had  believed  in  his 
heart  that  she  could  never  stand  the  life  of  the  stage, 
and  would  surely  give  it  up  in  sheer  disgust,  no  matter 
how  successful  she  might  be.  Yet  now,  she  did  not 
even  seem  offended  by  what  he  had  told  her.  So  much 
the  better,  he  thought;  for  he  was  far  too  truthful  to 


144  TEE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VI 

take  back  one  word  in  order  to  make  peace,  even  if  she 
burst  into  tears.  Possibly,  of  the  two,  his  reflections 
were  sadder  than  hers  just  then,  but  she  interrupted 
them  with  a  question. 

Tan  you  tell  me  of  any  one  thing  I  do  that  jars  on 
you?'  she  asked.  'Or  is  it  what  I  say,  or  my  way  of 
speaking?  I  should  like  to  know.' 

'It's  nothing,  and  it's  everything/  answered  Lush- 
ington,  taking  refuge  in  a  commonplace  phrase,  'and  I 
suppose  no  one  else  would  ever  notice  it.  But  I'm  so 
awfully  sensitive  about  certain  things.  You  know  why.' 

She  knew  why;  yet  it  was  with  a  sort  of  wonder  that 
she  asked  herself  what  there  was  in  her  tone  or  manner 
that  could  remind  him  of  his  mother;  but  though  she 
had  spoken  quietly,  and  almost  humbly,  a  cold  and 
secret  anger  was  slowly  rising  in  her.  The  great  artist, 
who  held  thousands  spellbound  and  breathless,  could 
not  submit  easily  to  losing  in  such  a  way  the  only 
friendship  that  had  ever  meant  much  to  her.  The  man 
who  had  just  told  her  that  she  had  lost  her  charm  for 
him  meant  that  she  was  sinking  to  the  level  of  her 
surroundings,  and  he  was  the  only  man  she  had  ever 
believed  that  she  loved.  Two  years  ago,  and  even  less, 
she  would  have  been  generously  angry  with  hirn,  and 
would  have  spoken  out,  and  perhaps  all  would  have 
been  over;  but  those  two  years  of  life  on  the  stage  had 
given  her  the  self-control  of  an  actress  when  she  chose 
to  exercise  it,  and  she  had  acquired  an  artificial  com 
mand  of  her  face  and  voice  which  had  not  belonged  to 
her  original  frank  and  simple  self.  Perhaps  Lushington 


CHAP.  VI  THE   PRIMADONNA  145 

knew  that  too,  as  a  part  of  the  change  that  offended 
his  taste.  At  twenty-two,  Margaret  Donne  would  have 
coloured,  and  would  have  given  him  a  piece  of  her 
young  mind  very  plainly;  Margarita  da  Cordova,  aged 
twenty-four,  turned  a  trifle  paler,  shut  her  lips,  and 
was  frigidly  angry,  as  if  some  ignorant  music-hall 
reporter  had  attacked  her  singing  in  print.  She  was 
convinced  that  Lushington  was  mistaken,  and  that  he 
was  merely  yielding  to  that  love  of  finding  fault  with 
what  he  liked  which  a  familiar  passage  in  Scripture 
attributes  to  the  Divinity,  but  with  which  many  of  us 
are  better  acquainted  in  our  friends;  in  her  opinion, 
such  fault-finding  was  personal  criticism,  and  it  irritated 
her  vanity,  over-fed  with  public  adulation  and  the 
sincere  praise  of  musical  critics.  'If  you  don't  like  me 
as  I  am,  there  are  so  many  people  who  do  that  you 
don't  count!'  That  was  the  sub-conscious  form  of  her 
mental  retort,  and  it  was  in  the  manner  of  Cordova, 
and  not  of  Margaret. 

Once  upon  a  time,  when  his  exaggerated  sense  of 
honour  was  driving  him  away,  she  had  said  rather 
foolishly  that  if  he  left  her  she  would  not  answer  for 
herself.  She  had  felt  a  little  desperate,  but  he  had 
told  her  quietly  that  he,  who  knew  her,  would  answer 
for  her,  and  her  mood  had  changed,  and  she  had  been 
herself  again.  But  it  was  different  this  time.  He 
meant  much  more  than  he  said;  he  meant  that  she 
had  lowered  herself,  and  she  was  sure  that  he  would 
not  'answer'  for  her  now.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  his 
intention  to  let  her  know  that  he  no  longer  believed  in 


146  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vi 

her,  and  perhaps  no  longer  respected  or  trusted  her. 
Yet,  little  by  little,  during  their  last  separation,  his 
belief  in  her,  and  his  respect  for  her,  had  grown  in  her 
estimation,  because  they  alone  still  connected  her  with 
the  maidenliness  and  feminine  refinement  in  which  she 
had  grown  up.  Lushing  ton  had  broken  a  link  that  had 
been  strong. 

She  was  at  one  of  the  cross-roads  of  her  life;  she  was 
at  a  turning  point  in  the  labyrinth,  after  passing  which 
it  would  be  hard  to  come  back  and  find  the  right  way. 
Perhaps  old  Griggs  could  help  her  if  it  occurred  to  him; 
but  that  was  unlikely,  for  he  had  reached  the  age  when 
men  who  have  seen  much  take  people  as  they  find  them. 
Logotheti  would  certainly  not  help  her,  though  she 
knew  instinctively  that  she  was  still  to  him  what  she 
had  always  been,  and  that  if  he  ever  had  the  opportunity 
he  sought,  her  chances  of  escape  would  be  small  indeed. 

Therefore  she  felt  more  lonely  after  Lushington  had 
spoken  than  she  had  ever  felt  since  her  parents  had  died, 
and  much  more  desperate.  But  nothing  in  the  world 
would  have  induced  her  to  let  him  know  it,  and  her 
anger  against  him  rose  slowly,  and  it  was  cold  and 
enduring,  as  that  sort  of  resentment  is.  She  was  so 
proud  that  it  gave  her  the  power  to  smile  carelessly 
after  a  minute's  silence,  and  she  asked  him  some  per 
fectly  idle  questions  about  the  news  of  the  day.  He 
should  not  know  that  he  had  hurt  her  very  much;  he 
should  not  suspect  for  a  moment  that  she  wished  him 
to  go  away. 

She  rose  presently  and  turned  up  the  lights,  rang  the 


CHAP.  VI  THE   PRIMADONNA  147 

bell,  and  when  the  window  curtains  were  drawn,  and 
tea  was  brought,  she  did  everything  she  could  to  make 
Lushington  feel  at  his  ease;  she  did  it  out  of  sheer  pride, 
for  she  did  not  meditate  any  vengeance,  but  was  only 
angry,  and  wished  to  get  rid  of  him  without  a  scene. 

At  last  he  rose  to  go  away,  and  when  he  held  out  his 
hand  there  was  a  dramatic  moment. 

'I  hope  you're  not  angry  with  me,'  he  said  with  a 
cheerful  smile,  for  he  was  quite  sure  that  she  bore  him 
no  lasting  grudge. 

'I?' 

She  laughed  so  frankly  and  musically  after  pro 
nouncing  the  syllable,  that  he  took  it  for  a  disclaimer. 

So  he  went  away,  shutting  the  door  after  him  in  a 
contented  way,  not  sharply  as  if  he  were  annoyed  with 
her,  nor  very  softly  and  considerately  as  if  he  were 
sorry  for  her,  but  with  a  moderate,  businesslike  snap 
of  the  latch  as  if  everything  were  all  right. 

She  went  back  to  the  piano  when  she  was  alone,  and 
sat  down  on  the  music-stool,  but  her  hands  did  not  go 
to  the  keys  till  she  was  sure  that  Lushington  was  already 
far  from  the  house. 

A  few  chords,  and  then  she  suddenly  began  to  sing 
with  the  full  power  of  her  voice,  as  if  she  were  on  the 
stage.  She  sang  Rosina's  song  in  the  Barbiere  di 
Siviglia  as  she  had  never  sung  it  in  her  life,  and  for 
the  first  time  the  words  pleased  her. 

'.    .    .  una  vipera  saro! ' 

What  'nice  English  girl'  ever  told  herself  or  any  one 
else  that  she  would  be  a  ' viper'? 


CHAPTER  VII 

Two  days  later  Margaret  was  somewhat  surprised  by 
an  informal  invitation  to  dine  at  the  Turkish  Embassy. 
The  Ambassador  had  lately  been  transferred  to  London 
from  Paris,  where  she  had  known  him  through  Logotheti 
and  had  met  him  two  or  three  times.  The  latter,  as  a 
Fanariote  Greek,  was  a  Turkish  subject,  and  although 
he  had  once  told  Margaret  that  the  Turks  had  murdered 
his  father  in  some  insurrection,  and  though  he  himself 
might  have  hesitated  to  spend  much  time  in  Constan 
tinople,  he  nevertheless  maintained  friendly  relations 
with  the  representatives  of  what  was  his  country;  and 
for  obvious  reasons,  connected  with  Turkish  finance, 
they  treated  him  with  marked  consideration.  On 
general  principles  and  in  theory  Turks  and  Greeks  hate 
each  other;  in  practice  they  can  live  very  amicably 
side  by  side.  In  the  many  cases  in  which  Armenians 
have  been  attacked  and  killed  by  the  Turks  no  Greek 
has  ever  been  hurt  except  by  accident;  on  the  other 
hand,  none  has  lifted  a  hand  to  defend  an  Armenian  in 
distress,  which  sufficiently  proves  that  the  question  of 
religion  has  not  been  concerned  at  all. 

Margaret  accepted  the  Ambassador's  invitation,  feel 
ing  tolerably  sure  of  meeting  Logotheti  at  the  dinner. 
If  there  were  any  other  women  they  would  be  of  the 

148 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  149 

meteoric  sort,  the  fragments  of  former  social  planets 
that  go  on  revolving  in  the  old  orbit,  more  or  less 
divorced,  bankrupt,  or  otherwise  unsound,  though  still 
smart,  the  kind  of  women  who  are  asked  to  fill  a  table 
on  such  occasions  'because  they  won't  mind'  --  that  is 
to  say,  they  will  not  object  to  dining  with  a  primadonna 
or  an  actress  whose  husband  has  become  nebulous 
and  whose  reputation  is  mottled.  The  men,  of  whom 
there  might  be  several,  would  be  either  very  clever  or 
overpoweringly  noble,  because  all  geniuses  and  all  peers 
are  supposed  to  like  their  birds  of  paradise  a  little  high. 
I  wonder  why.  I  have  met  and  talked  with  a  good 
many  men  of  genius,  from  Wagner  and  Liszt  to  Zola 
and  some  still  living  contemporaries,  and,  really,  their 
general  preference  for  highly  correct  social  gatherings 
has  struck  me  as  phenomenal.  There  are  even  noble 
men  who  seem  to  be  quite  respectable,  and  pretend 
that  they  would  rather  talk  to  an  honest  woman  at  a 
dinner  party  than  drink  bumpers  of  brut  champagne 
out  of  Astarte's  satin  slipper. 

Mustapha  Pasha,  the  Turkish  Ambassador,  was  a 
fair,  pale  man  of  fifty,  who  had  spiritual  features,  quiet 
blue  eyes,  and  a  pleasant  smile.  His  hands  were  deli 
cately  made  and  very  white,  but  not  effeminate.  He 
had  been  educated  partly  in  England,  and  spoke  Eng 
lish  without  difficulty  and  almost  without  accent,  as 
Logotheti  did.  He  came  forward  to  meet  Margaret  as 
she  entered  the  room,  and  he  greeted  her  warmly, 
thanking  her  for  being  so  good  as  to  come  at  short 
notice. 


150  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

Logotheti  was  the  next  to  take  her  hand,  and  she 
looked  at  him  attentively  when  her  eyes  met  his, 
wondering  whether  he,  too,  would  think  her  changed. 
He  himself  was  not,  at  all  events.  Mustapha  Pasha, 
a  born  Musalman  and  a  genuine  Turk,  never  arrested 
attention  in  an  English  drawing-room  by  his  appearance; 
but  Constantine  Logotheti,  the  Greek,  was  an  Oriental 
in  looks  as  well  as  in  character.  His  beautiful  eyes 
were  almond-shaped,  his  lips  were  broad  and  rather 
flat,  and  the  small  black  moustache  grew  upwards  and 
away  from  them  so  as  not  to  hide  his  mouth  at  all.  He 
had  an  even  olive  complexion,  and  any  judge  of  men 
would  have  seen  at  a  glance  that  he  was  thoroughly 
sound  and  as  strong  as  a  professional  athlete.  His  coat 
had  a  velvet  collar;  a  single  emerald  stud,  worth  several 
thousand  pounds,  diffused  a  green  refulgence  round 
itself  in  the  middle  of  his  very  shiny  shirt  front;  his 
waistcoat  was  embroidered  and  adorned  with  diamond 
buttons,  his  trousers  were  tight,  and  his  name,  with 
those  of  three  or  four  other  European  financiers,  made 
it  alternately  possible  or  impossible  for  impecunious 
empires  and  kingdoms  to  raise  money  in  England, 
France  and  Germany.  In  matters  of  business,  in  the 
East,  the  Jew  fears  the  Greek,  the  Greek  fears  the  Arme 
nian,  the  Armenian  fears  the  Persian,  and  the  Persian 
fears  only  Allah.  One  reason  why  the  Jews  do  not 
care  to  return  to  Palestine  and  Asia  Minor  is  that  they 
cannot  get  a  living  amongst  Christians  and  Mohamme 
dans,  a  plain  fact  which  those  eminent  and  charitable 
European  Jews  who  are  trying  to  draw  their  fellow- 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  151 

believers  eastward  would  do  well  to  consider.  Even  in 
Europe  there  are  far  more  poor  Jews  than  Christians 
realise;  in  Asia  there  are  hardly  any  rich  ones.  The 
Venetians  were  too  much  for  Shylock,  and  he  lost  his 
ducats  and  his  daughter;  amongst  Christian  Greeks, 
Christian  Armenians,  and  Musalman  Persians,  from 
Constantinople  to  Tiflis,  Teheran,  Bagdad  and  Cairo, 
the  poor  man  could  not  have  saved  sixpence  a  year. 

This  is  not  a  mere  digression,  since  it  may  serve  to  de 
fine  Logotheti's  position  in  the  scale  of  the  financial  forces. 

Margaret  took  his  hand  and  looked  at  him  just  a 
little  longer  than  she  had  looked  at  Mustapha  Pasha. 
He  never  wrote  to  her,  and  never  took  the  trouble  to  let 
her  know  where  he  was;  but  when  they  met  his  time 
was  hers,  and  when  he  could  be  with  her  he  seemed  to 
have  no  other  pre-occupation  in  life. 

'I  came  over  from  Paris  to-day/  he  said.  'When 
may  I  come  and  see  you?' 

That  was  always  the  first  question,  for  he  never 
wasted  time. 

'  To-morrow,  if  you  like.    Come  late  —  about  seven/ 

The  Ambassador  was  on  her  other  side.  A  little  knot 
of  men  and  one  lady  were  standing  near  the  fire  in  an 
expectant  sort  of  way,  ready  to  be  introduced  to  Mar 
garet.  She  saw  the  bony  head  of  Paul  Griggs,  and  she 
smiled  at  him  from  a  distance.  He  was  ialking  to  a  very 
handsome  and  thorough-bred  looking  woman  in  plain 
black  velvet,  who  had  the  most  perfectly  beautiful 
shoulders  Margaret  had  ever  seen. 

Mustapha  Pasha  led  the  Primadonna  to  the  group. 


152  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

'Lady  Maud/  he  said  to  the  beauty,  'this  is  my  old 
friend  Senorita  da  Cordova.  Countess  Leven/  he  added, 
for  Margaret's  benefit. 

She  had  not  met  him  more  than  three  times,  but  she 
did  not  resent  being  called  his  old  friend.  It  was  well 
meant,  she  thought. 

Lady  Maud  held  out  her  hand  cordially. 

'I've  wanted  to  know  you  ever  so  long/  she  said,  in 
her  sweet  low  voice. 

'That's  very  kind  of  you/  Margaret  answered. 

It  is  not  easy  to  find  a  proper  reply  to  people  wiio 
say  they  have  long  hoped  to  meet  you,  but  Griggs  came 
to  the  rescue,  as  he  shook  hands  in  his  turn. 

'That  was  not  a  mere  phrase/  he  said  with  a  smile. 
'It's  quite  true.  Lady  Maud  wanted  me  to  give  her  a 
letter  to  you  a  year  ago.' 

'Indeed  I  did/  asseverated  the  beauty,  nodding,  'but 
Mr.  Griggs  said  he  didn't  know  you  well  enough  V 

'You  might  have  asked  me/  observed  Logotheti. 
'I'm  less  cautious  than  Griggs.' 

'You're  too  exotic/  retorted  Lady  Maud,  with  a 
ripple  in  her  voice. 

The  adjective  described  the  Greek  so  well  that  the 
others  laughed. 

'Exotic/  Margaret  repeated  the  word  thoughtfully. 

'For  that  matter,"  put  in  Mustapha  Pasha  with  a 
smile,  'I  can  hardly  be  called  a  native!' 

The  Countess  Leven  looked  at  him  critically. 

'You  could  pass  for  one/  she  said,  'but  Monsieur 
Logotheti  couldn't.' 


CHAP,  vii  THE   PRIMADONNA  153 

The  other  men,  whom  Margaret  did  not  know,  had 
been  listening  in  silence,  and  maintained  their  expectant 
attitude.  In  the  pause  which  followed  Lady  Maud's 
remark  the  Ambassador  introduced  them  in  foreign 
fashion:  one  was  a  middle-aged  peer  who  wore  gold- 
rimmed  spectacles  and  looked  like  a  student  or  a  man 
of  letters;  another  was  the  most  successful  young  play 
wright  of  the  younger  generation,  and  he  wore  a  very 
good  coat  and  was  altogether  well  turned  out,  for  in 
his  heart  he  prided  himself  on  being  the  best  groomed 
man  in  London;  a  third  was  a  famous  barrister  who 
had  a  crisp  and  breezy  way  with  him  that  made  flat 
calms  in  conversation  impossible.  Lastly,  a  very  dis 
agreeable  young  man,  who  seemed  a  mere  boy,  was 
introduced  to  the  Primadonna. 

'Mr.  Feist/  said  the  Ambassador,  who  never  forgot 
names. 

Margaret  was  aware  of  a  person  with  an  unhealthy 
complexion,  thick  hair  of  a  dead-leaf  brown  colour,  and 
staring  blue  eyes  that  made  her  think  of  glass  marbles. 
The  face  had  an  unnaturally  youthful  look,  and  yet,  at 
the  same  time,  there  was  something  profoundly  vicious 
about  it.  Margaret  wondered  who  in  the  world  the 
young  man  might  be  and  why  he  was  at  the  Turkish 
Embassy,  apparently  invited  there  to  meet  her.  She  at 
once  supposed  that  in  spite  of  his  appearance  he  must 
have  some  claim  to  celebrity. 

'I'm  a  great  admirer  of  yours,  Senorita,'  said  Mr. 
Feist  in  a  womanish  voice  and  with  a  drawl.  'I  was  hi 
the  Metropolitan  in  New  York  when  you  sang  in  the 


154  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

dark  and  prevented  a  panic.  I  suppose  that  was  about 
the  finest  thing  any  singer  ever  did.' 

Margaret  smiled  pleasantly,  though  she  felt  the 
strongest  repulsion  for  the  man. 

'I  happened  to  be  on  the  stage/  she  said  modestly. 
1  Any  of  the  others  would  have  done  the  same.' 

'Well,1  drawled  Mr.  Feist,  'may  be.     I  doubt  it.' 

Dinner  was  announced. 

'Will  you  keep  house  for  me?'  asked  the  Ambassador 
of  Lady  Maud. 

'There's  something  rather  appropriate  about  your 
playing  Ambassadress  here,'  observed  Logotheti. 

Margaret  heard  but  did  not  understand  that  her  new 
acquaintance  was  a  Russian  subject.  Mustapha  Pasha 
held  out  his  arm  to  take  her  in  to  dinner.  The  spec 
tacled  peer  took  in  Lady  Maud,  and  the  men  straggled 
in.  At  table  Lady  Maud  sat  opposite  the  Pasha,  with 
the  peer  on  her  right  and  the  barrister  on  her  left. 
Margaret  was  on  the  right  of  the  Ambassador,  on  whose 
other  side  Griggs  was  placed,  and  Logotheti  was  Mar 
garet's  other  neighbour.  Feist  and  the  young  play 
wright  were  together,  between  Griggs  and  the  nobleman. 

Margaret  glanced  round  the  table  at  the  people  and 
wondered  about  them.  She  had  heard  of  the  barrister 
and  the  novelist,  and  the  peer's  name  had  a  familiar 
sound  that  suggested  something  unusual,  though  she 
could  not  quite  remember  what  it  was.  It  might  be 
pictures,  or  the  north  pole,  or  the  divorce  court,  or  a  new 
idiot  asylum;  it  would  never  matter  much.  The  new 
acquaintances  on  whom  her  attention  fixed  itself  were 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  155 

Lady  Maud,  who  attracted  her  strongly,  and  Mr.  Feist, 
who  repelled  her.  She  wished  she  could  speak  Greek 
in  order  to  ask  Logotheti  who  the  latter  was  and  why 
he  was  present.  To  judge  by  appearances  he  was 
probably  a  rich  young  American  who  travelled  and 
frequented  theatres  a  good  deal,  and  who  wished  to  be 
able  to  say  that  he  knew  Cordova.  He  had  perhaps 
arrived  lately  with  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  Am 
bassador,  who  had  asked  him  to  the  first  nondescript 
informal  dinner  he  gave,  because  the  man  would  not 
have  fitted  in  anywhere  else. 

Logotheti  began  to  talk  at  once,  while  Mustapha 
Pasha  plunged  into  a  political  conversation  with  Griggs. 

'I'm  much  more  glad  to  see  you  than  you  can  imagine/ 
the  Greek  said,  not  in  an  undertone,  but  just  so  softly 
that  no  one  else  could  hear  him. 

'I'm  not  good  at  imagining,'  answered  Margaret. 
'But  I'm  glad  you  are  here.  There  are  so  many  new 
faces.' 

'  Happily  you  are  not  shy.  One  of  your  most  enviable 
qualities  is  your  self-possession.' 

'You're  not  lacking  in  that  way  either/  laughed 
Margaret.  'Unless  you  have  changed  very  much.' 

'Neither  of  us  has  changed  much  since  last  year.  I 
only  wish  you  would!' 

Margaret  turned  her  head  to  look  at  him. 

'So  you  think  I  am  not  changed!'  she  said,  with  a 
little  pleased  surprise  in  her  tone. 

'Not  a  bit.  If  anything,  you  have  grown  younger 
in  the  last  two  years.' 


156  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VII 

'Does  that  mean  more  youthful?  More  frisky?  I 
hope  not!' 

'No,  not  at  all.  What  I  see  is  the  natural  effect  of 
vast  success  on  a  very  nice  woman.  Formerly,  even 
after  you  had  begun  your  career,  you  had  some  doubts 
as  to  the  ultimate  result.  The  future  made  you  restless, 
and  sometimes  disturbed  the  peace  of  your  face  a  little, 
when  you  thought  about  it  too  much.  That's  all  gone 
now,  and  you  are  your  real  self,  as  nature  meant  you 
to  be.' 

'My  real  self?    You  mean,  the  professional  singer!' 

'No.  A  great  artist,  in  the  person  of  a  thoroughly 
nice  woman.' 

Margaret  had  thought  that  blushing  was  a  thing  of 
the  past  with  her,  but  a  soft  colour  rose  in  her  cheeks 
now,  from  sheer  pleasure  at  what  he  had  said. 

'I  hope  you  don't  think  it  impertinent  of  me  to  tell 
you  so,'  said  Logo  the  ti  with  a  slight  intonation  of 
anxiety. 

'Impertinent!'  cried  Margaret.  'It's  the  nicest  thing 
any  one  has  said  to  me  for  months,  and  thank  goodness 
I'm  not  above  being  pleased.' 

Nor  was  Logotheti  above  using  any  art  that  could 
please  kher.  His  instinct  about  women,  finding  no 
scruples  in  the  way,  had  led  him  into  present  favour  by 
the  shortest  road.  It  is  one  thing  to  say  brutally  that 
all  women  like  flattery;  it  is  quite  another  to  foresee 
just  what  form  of  flattery  they  will  like.  People  who 
do  not  know  professional  artistic  life  from  the  inner  side 
are  much  too  ready  to  cry  out  that  first-class  pro- 


CHAP,  vii  THE   PRIMADONNA  157 

fessionals  will  swallow  any  amount  of  undiscriminating 
praise.  The  ability  to  judge  their  own  work  is  one  of 
the  gifts  which  place  them  above  the  second  class. 

'I  said  what  I  thought/  observed  Logo  the  ti  with  a 
sudden  air  of  conscientious  reserve.  'For  once  in  our 
acquaintance,  I  was  not  thinking  of  pleasing  you. 
And  then  I  was  afraid  that  I  had  displeased  you,  as  I 
so  often  have.' 

The  last  words  were  spoken  with  a  regret  that  was 
real. 

'I  have  forgiven  you,'  said  Margaret  quietly;  'with 
conditions!'  she  added,  as  an  afterthought,  and  smiling. 

'Oh,  I  know  —  I'll  never  do  it  again.' 

'That's  what  a  runaway  horse  seems  to  say  when  he 
walks  quietly  home,  with  his  head  down  and  his  ears 
limp,  after  nearly  breaking  one's  neck!' 

'I  was  a  born  runaway/  said  Logo  the  ti  meekly,  'but 
you  have  cured  me.' 

In  the  pause  that  followed  this  speech,  Mr.  Feist 
leaned  forward  and  spoke  to  Margaret  across  the  table. 

'I  think  we  have  a  mutual  friend,  Madame/  he  said. 

'Indeed?'  Margaret  spoke  coolly;  she  did  not  like 
to  be  called  'Madame'  by  people  who  spoke  English. 

'Mr.  Van  Torp/  explained  the  young  man. 

'Yes/  Margaret  said,  after  a  moment's  hesitation, 
'I  know  Mr.  Van  Torp;  he  came  over  on  the  same 
steamer/ 

The  others  at  the  table  were  suddenly  silent,  and 
seemed  to  be  listening.  Lady  Maud's  clear  eyes  rested 
on  Mr.  Feist's  face. 


158  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

'He's  quite  a  wonderful  man,  I  think/  observed  the 
latter. 

'Yes/  assented  the  Primadonna  indifferently. 

'Don't  you  think  he  is  a  wonderful  man?'  insisted 
Mr.  Feist,  with  his  disagreeable  drawl. 

'I  daresay  he  is/  Margaret  answered,  'but  I  don't 
know  him  very  well.' 

'Really?    That's  funny!' 

'Why?' 

'Because  I  happen  to  know  that  he  thinks  everything 
of  you,  Madame  Cordova.  That's  why  I  supposed  you 
were  intimate  friends/ 

The  others  had  listened  hitherto  in  a  sort  of  mournful 
silence,  distinctly  bored.  Lady  Maud's  eyes  now  turned 
to  Margaret,  but  the  latter  still  seemed  perfectly  in 
different,  though  she  was  wishing  that  some  one  else 
would  speak.  Griggs  turned  to  Mr.  Feist,  who  was  next 
to  him. 

'You  mean  that  he  is  a  wonderful  man  of  business, 
perhaps/  he  said. 

'Well,  we  all  know  he's  that,  anyway/  returned 
his  neighbour.  'He's  not  exactly  a  friend  of  mine,  not 
exactly!'  A  meaning  smile  wrinkled  the  unhealthy 
face  and  suddenly  made  it  look  older.  'All  the  same, 
I  think  he's  quite  wonderful.  He's  not  merely  an  able 
man,  he's  a  man  of  powerful  intellect.' 

'A  Nickel  Napoleon/  suggested  the  barrister,  who 
was  bored  to  death  by  this  time,  and  could  not  imagine 
why  Lady  Maud  followed  the  conversation  with  so 
much  interest. 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  159 

'  Your  speaking  of  nickel/  said  the  peer,  at  her  elbow, 
'reminds  me  of  that  extraordinary  new  discovery  — 
let  me  see  —  what  is  it?' 

'America?'  suggested  the  barrister  viciously. 

'No/  said  his  lordship,  with  perfect  gravity,  'it's  not 
that.  Ah  yes,  I  remember!  It's  a  process  for  making 
nitric  acid  out  of  air.' 

Lady  Maud  nodded  and  smiled,  as  if  she  knew  all 
about  it,  but  her  eyes  were  again  scrutinising  Mr.  Feist's 
face.  Her  neighbour,  whose  hobby  was  applied  science, 
at  once  launched  upon  a  long  account  of  the  invention. 
From  time  to  time  the  beauty  nodded  and  said  that 
she  quite  understood,  which  was  totally  untrue,  but 
well  meant. 

'That  young  man  has  the  head  of  a  criminal/  said  the 
barrister  on  her  other  side,  speaking  very  low. 

She  bent  her  head  very  slightly,  to  show  that  she  had 
heard,  and  she  continued  to  listen  to  the  description  of 
the  new  process.  By  this  time  every  one  was  talking 
again.  Mr.  Feist  was  in  conversation  with  Griggs,  and 
showed  his  profile  to  the  barrister,  who  quietly  studied 
the  retreating  forehead  and  the  ill-formed  jaw,  the 
latter  plainly  discernible  to  a  practised  eye,  in  spite 
of  the  round  cheeks.  The  barrister  was  a  little  mad  on 
the  subject  of  degeneracy,  and  knew  that  an  unnaturally 
boyish  look  in  a  grown  man  is  one  of  the  signs  of  it. 
In  the  course  of  a  long  experience  at  the  bar  he  had 
appeared  in  defence  of  several  'high-class  criminals.' 
By  way  of  comparing  Mr.  Feist  with  a  perfectly  healthy 
specimen  of  humanity,  he  turned  to  look  at  Logotheti 


160  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vil 

beside  him.  Margaret  was  talking  with  the  Ambassa 
dor,  and  the  Greek  was  just  turning  to  talk  to  his  neigh 
bour,  so  that  their  eyes  met,  and  each  waited  for  the 
other  to  speak  first. 

1  Are  you  a  judge  of  faces?'  asked  the  barrister  after 
a  moment. 

1  Men  of  business  have  to  be,  to  some  extent/  answered 
Logotheti. 

'So  do  lawyers.  What  should  you  say  was  the  matter 
with  that  one?' 

It  was  impossible  to  doubt  that  he  was  speaking  of 
the  only  abnormal  head  at  the  table,  and  Logotheti 
looked  across  the  wide  table  at  Mr.  Feist  for  several 
seconds  before  he  answered. 

'  Drink/  he  said  in  an  undertone,  when  he  had  finished 
his  examination. 

'Yes.     Anything  else?' 

'May  go  mad  any  day,  I  should  think/  observed 
Logotheti. 

'Do  you  know  anything  about  him?' 

'Never  saw  him  before.' 

'And  we  shall  probably  never  see  him  again/  said  the 
Englishman.  'That's  the  worst  of  it.  One  sees  such 
heads  occasionally,  but  one  very  rarely  hears  what  be 
comes  of  them.' 

The  Greek  did  not  care  a  straw  what  became  of  Mr. 
Feist's  head,  for  he  was  waiting  to  renew  his  conversa 
tion  with  Margaret. 

Mustapha  Pasha  told  her  that  she  should  go  to  Con 
stantinople  some  day  and  sing  to  the  Sultan,  who  would 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  161 

give  her  a  pretty  decoration  in  diamonds;  and  she 
laughed  carelessly  and  answered  that  it  might  be  very 
amusing. 

'I  shall  be  very  happy  to  show  you  the  way/  said  the 
Pasha.  'Whenever  you  have  a  fancy  for  the  trip, 
promise  to  let  me  know.' 

Margaret  had  no  doubt  that  he  was  quite  in  earnest, 
and  would  enjoy  the  holiday  vastly.  She  was  used  to 
such  kind  offers  and  knew  how  to  laugh  at  them,  though 
she  was  very  well  aware  that  they  were  not  made  in 
jest. 

'I  have  a  pretty  little  villa  on  the  Bosphorus/  said 
the  Ambassador,  'If  you  should  ever  come  to  Con 
stantinople  it  is  at  your  disposal,  with  everything  hi  it, 
as  long  as  you  care  to  use  it.' 

'It's  too  good  of  you!'  she  answered.  'But  I  have  a 
small  house  of  my  own  here  which  is  very  comfortable, 
and  I  like  London.' 

'I  know,'  answered  the  Pasha  blandly;  'I  only  meant 
to  suggest  a  little  change.' 

He  smiled  pleasantly,  as  if  he  had  meant  nothing, 
and  there  was  a  pause,  of  which  Logotheti  took  advan 
tage. 

'You  are  admirable/  he  said. 

'I  have  had  much   more    magnificent    invitations/ 

she   answered.     'You   once   wished   to   give   me   your 

yacht  as  a  present  if  I  would  only  make  a  trip  to  Crete 

-with  a  party  of  archaeologists !    An  archduke  once 

proposed  to  take  me  for  a  drive  in  a  cab!' 

'If  I  remember/  said  Logotheti,  'I  offered  you  the 


162  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

owner  with  the  yacht.  But  I  fancy  you  thought  me 
too  "exotic,"  as  Countess  Leven  calls  me/ 

'Oh,  much!'  Margaret  laughed  again,  and  then 
lowered  her  voice,  'by  the  bye,  who  is  she?' 

'Lady  Maud?  Didn't  you  know  her?  She  is  Lord 
Creedmore's  daughter,  one  of  seven  or  eight,  I  believe. 
She  married  a  Russian  in  the  diplomatic  service,  four 
years  ago  —  Count  Leven  —  but  everybody  here  calls  her 
Lady  Maud.  She  hadn't  a  penny,  for  the  Creedmores  are 
poor.  Leven  was  supposed  to  be  rich,  but  there  are  all 
sorts  of  stories  about  him,  and  he's  often  hard  up.  As 
for  her,  she  always  wears  that  black  velvet  gown,  and 
I've  been  told  that  she  has  no  other.  I  fancy  she  gets  a 
new  one  every  year.  But  people  say ' 

Logotheti  broke  off  suddenly. 

'What  do  they  say?'  Margaret  was  interested. 

'No,  I  shall  not  tell  you,  because  I  don't  believe  it.' 

'If  you  say  you  don't  believe  the  story,  what  harm 
can  there  be  in  telling  it?7 

'  No  harm,  perhaps.  But  what  is  the  use  of  repeating 
a  bit  of  wicked  gossip?' 

Margaret's  curiosity  was  roused  about  the  beautiful 
Englishwoman. 

'If  you  won't  tell  me,  I  may  think  it  is  something  far 
worse ! ' 

'I'm  sure  you  could  not  imagine  anything  more  un 
likely!7 

'Please  tell  me!  Please!  I  know  it's  mere  idle  curi 
osity,  but  you've  roused  it,  and  I  shall  not  sleep  unless 
I  know.' 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  163 

'  And  that  would  be  bad  for  your  voice/ 

'  Of  course !    Please  — 

Logotheti  had  not  meant  to  yield,  but  he  could  not 
resist  her  winning  tone. 

'I'll  tell  you,  but  I  don't  believe  a  word  of  it,  and  I 
hope  you  will  not  either.  The  story  is  that  her  husband 
found  her  with  Van  Torp  the  other  evening  in  rooms 
he  keeps  in  the  Temple,  and  there  was  an  envelope  on 
the  table  addressed  to  her  in  his  handwriting,  in  which 
there  were  four  thousand  one  hundred  pounds  in 
notes.' 

Margaret  looked  thoughtfully  at  Lady  Maud  before 
she  answered. 

'She?  With  Mr.  Van  Torp,  and  taking  money  from 
him?  Oh  no!  Not  with  that  face!' 

'Besides/  said  Logotheti,  'why  the  odd  hundred? 
The  story  gives  too  many  details.  People  never  know 
as  much  of  the  truth  as  that.7 

'And  if  it  is  true/  returned  Margaret,  'he  will  divorce 
her,  and  then  we  shall  know.' 

'For  that  matter/  said  the  Greek  contemptuously, 
'Leven  would  not  be  particular,  provided  he  had  his 
share  of  the  profits.' 

'  Is  it  as  bad  as  that  ?   How  disgusting !    Poor  woman ! ' 

'Yes.  I  fancy  she  is  to  be  pitied.  In  connection 
with  Van  Torp,  may  I  ask  an  indiscreet  question?' 

'No  question  you  can  ask  me  about  him  can  be  in 
discreet.  What  is  it?' 

'Is  it  true  that  he  once  asked  you  to  marry  him  and 
you  refused  him?' 


164  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VII 

Margaret  turned  her  pale  face  to  Logotheti  with  a  look 
of  genuine  surprise. 

'Yes.  It's  true.  But  I  never  told  any  one.  How 
in  the  world  did  you  hear  it?' 

'And  he  quite  lost  his  head,  I  heard,  and  behaved  like 
a  madman  — 

'Who  told  you  that?'  asked  Margaret,  more  and  more 
astonished,  and  not  at  all  pleased. 

'He  behaved  so  strangely  that  you  ran  into  the  next 
room  and  bolted  the  door,  and  waited  till  he  went 


away 

'Have  you  been  paying  a  detective  to  watch  me?' 

There  was  anger  in  her  eyes  for  a  moment,  but  she 
saw  at  once  that  she  was  mistaken. 

'No,'  Logotheti  answered  with  a  smile,  'why  should 
I?  If  a  detective  told  me  anything  against  you  I  should 
not  believe  it,  and  no  one  could  tell  me  half  the  good  I 
believe  about  you!' 

'You're  really  awfully  nice/  laughed  Margaret,  for 
she  could  not  help  being  flattered.  'Forgive  me, 
please ! ' 

'I  would  rather  that  the  Nike  of  Samothrace  should 
think  dreadful  things  of  me  than  that  she  should  not 
think  of  me  at  all!' 

'Do  I  still  remind  you  of  her?'  asked  Margaret. 

'Yes.  I  used  to  be  quite  satisfied  with  my  Venus, 
but  now  I  want  the  Victory  from  the  Louvre.  It's  not 
a  mere  resemblance.  She  is  you,  and  as  she  has  no  face 
I  see  yours  when  I  look  at  her.  The  other  day  I  stood 
so  long  on  the  landing  where  she  is,  that  a  watchman 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  165 

took  me  for  an  anarchist  waiting  to  deposit  a  bomb, 
and  he  called  a  policeman,  who  asked  me  my  name  and 
occupation.  I  was  very  near  being  arrested  —  on  your 
account  again!  You  are  destined  to  turn  the  heads  of 
men  of  business!' 

At  this  point  Margaret  became  aware  that  she  and 
Logo  the  ti  were  talking  in  undertones,  while  the  con 
versation  at  the  table  had  become  general,  and  she 
reluctantly  gave  up  the  idea  of  again  asking  where  he 
had  got  his  information  about  her  interview  with  Mr.  Van 
Torp  in  New  York.  The  dinner  came  to  an  end  before 
long,  and  the  men  went  out  with  the  ladies,  and  began  to 
smoke  in  the  drawing-room,  standing  round  the  coffee. 

Lady  Maud  put  her  arm  through  Margaret's. 

'Cigarettes  are  bad  for  your  throat,  I'm  sure,'  she  said, 
'and  I  hate  them.' 

She  led  the  Primadonna  away  through  a  curtained 
door  to  a  small  room  furnished  according  to  Eastern 
ideas  of  comfort,  and  she  sat  down  on  a  low,  hard  divan, 
which  was  covered  with  a  silk  carpet.  The  walls  were 
hung  with  Persian  silks,  and  displayed  three  or  four 
texts  from  the  Koran,  beautifully  written  in  gold  on  a 
green  ground.  Two  small  inlaid  tables  stood  near  the 
divan,  one  at  each  end,  and  two  deep  English  easy- 
chairs,  covered  with  red  leather,  were  placed  symmetri 
cally  beside  them.  There  was  no  other  furniture,  and 
there  were  no  gimcracks  about,  such  as  Europeans 
think  necessary  in  an  'oriental'  room. 

With  her  plain  black  velvet,  Lady  Maud  looked  hand 
somer  than  ever  in  the  severely  simple  surroundings. 


166  THE  PRIMADONNA  «HAP.  vn 

'Do  you  mind?'  she  asked,  as  Margaret  sat  down  be 
side  her.  'I'm  afraid  I  carried  you  off  rather  uncere 
moniously  ! ' 

'No/  Margaret  answered.  'I'm  glad  to  be  quiet,  it's 
so  long  since  I  was  at  a  dinner-party.' 

'I've  always  hoped  to  meet  you/  said  Lady  Maud, 
'but  you're  quite  different  from  what  I  expected.  I  did 
not  know  you  were  really  so  young  —  ever  so  much 
younger  than  I  am/ 

'Really?' 

'Oh,  yes!  I'm  seven-and-twenty,  and  I've  been 
married  four  years.' 

'I'm  twenty-four/  said  Margaret,  'and  I'm  not 
married  yet.' 

She  was  aware  that  the  clear  eyes  were  studying  her 
face,  but  she  did  not  resent  their  scrutiny.  There  was 
something  about  her  companion  that  inspired  her  with 
trust  at  first  sight,  and  she  did  not  even  remember  the 
impossible  story  Logotheti  had  told  her. 

'I  suppose  you  are  tormented  by  all  sorts  of  people 
who  ask  things,  aren't  you?' 

Margaret  wondered  whether  the  beauty  was  going  to 
ask  her  to  sing  for  nothing  at  a  charity  concert. 

'I  get  a  great  many  begging  letters,  and  some  very 
amusing  ones/  she  answered  cautiously.  'Young  girls, 
of  wrhom  I  never  heard,  write  and  ask  me  to  give  them 
pianos  and  the  means  of  getting  a  musical  education. 
I  once  took  the  trouble  to  have  one  of  those  requests 
examined.  It  came  from  a  gang  of  thieves  in  Chicago.' 

Lady  Maud  smiled,  but  did  not  seem  surprised. 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  167 

'Millionaires  get  lots  of  letters  of  that  sort/  she  said. 
'Think  of  poor  Mr.  Van  Torp!' 

Margaret  moved  uneasily  at  the  name,  which  seemed 
to  pursue  her  since  she  had  left  New  York;  but  her 
present  companion  was  the  first  person  who  had  applied 
to  him  the  adjective  'poor.' 

'Do  you  know  him  well?'  she  asked,  by  way  of  saying 
something. 

Lady  Maud  was  silent  for  a  moment,  and  seemed  to 
be  considering  the  question. 

'I  had  not  meant  to  speak  of  him/  she  answered 
presently.  '  I  like  him,  and  from  what  you  said  at  dinner 
I  fancy  that  you  don't,  so  we  shall  never  agree  about 
him.' 

'Perhaps  not/  said  Margaret.  'But  I  really  could  not 
have  answered  that  odious  man's  question  in  any  other 
way,  could  I?  I  meant  to  be  quite  truthful.  Though 
I  have  met  Mr.  Van  Torp  often  since  last  Christmas,  I 
cannot  say  that  I  know  him  very  well,  because  I  have 
not  seen  the  best  side  of  him.' 

'Few  people  ever  do,  and  you  have  put  it  as  fairly  as 
possible.  When  I  first  met  him  I  thought  he  was  a 
dreadful  person,  and  now  we're  awfully  good  friends. 
But  I  did  not  mean  to  talk  about  him!' 

'I  wish  you  would/  protested  Margaret.  'I  should 
like  to  hear  the  other  side  of  the  case  from  some  one 
who  knows  him  well.' 

'It  would  take  all  night  to  tell  even  what  I  know  of 
his  story/  said  Lady  Maud.  'And  as  you've  never 
seen  me  before  you  probably  would  not  believe  me/ 


168  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vii 

she  added  with  philosophical  calm.  'Why  should  you? 
The  other  side  of  the  case,  as  I  know  it,  is  that  he  is 
kind  to  me,  and  good  to  people  in  trouble,  and  true  to 
his  friends.' 

1  You  cannot  say  more  than  that  of  any  man/  Margaret 
observed  gravely. 

'I  could  say  much  more,  but  I  want  to  talk  to  you 
about  other  things/ 

Margaret,  who  was  attracted  by  her,  and  who  was  sure 
that  the  story  Logotheti  had  told  was  a  fabrication,  as 
he  said  it  was,  wished  that  her  new  acquaintance  would 
leave  other  matters  alone  and  tell  her  what  she  knew 
about  Van  Torp. 

'It  all  comes  of  my  having  mentioned  him  accident 
ally/  said  Lady  Maud.  '  But  I  often  do  —  probably  be 
cause  I  think  about  him  a  good  deal.' 

Margaret  thought  her  amazingly  frank,  but  nothing 
suggested  itself  in  the  way  of  answer,  so  she  remained 
silent. 

'Did  you  know  that  your  father  and  my  father  were 
friends  at  Oxford?'  Lady  Maud  asked,  after  a  little 
pause. 

'Really?'     Margaret  was  surprised. 

'When  they  were  undergrads.  Your  name  is  Donne, 
isn't  it?  Margaret  Donne?  My  father  was  called 
Foxwell  then.  That's  our  name,  you  know.  He  didn't 
come  into  the  title  till  his  uncle  died,  a  few  years  ago.' 

'But  I  remember  a  Mr.  Foxwell  when  I  was  a  child/ 
said  Margaret.  'He  came  to  see  us  at  Oxford  sometimes. 
Do  you  mean  to  say  that  he  was  your  father?' 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  169 

1  Yes.  He  is  alive,  you  know  —  tremendously  alive ! 
-  and  he  remembers  you  as  a  little  girl,  and  wants  me 
to  bring  you  to  see  him.  Do  you  mind  very  much? 
I  told  him  I  was  to  meet  you  this  evening.' 

'I  should  be  very  glad  indeed/  said  Margaret. 

'He  would  come  to  see  you,'  said  Lady  Maud,  rather 
apologetically,  '  but  he  sprained  his  ankle  the  other  day. 
He  was  chivvying  a  cat  that  was  after  the  pheasants  at 
Creedmore  —  he's  absurdly  young,  you  know  —  and 
he  came  down  at  some  hurdles.' 

'I'm  so  sorry!     Of  course  I  shall  be  delighted  to  go.' 

'It's  awfully  good  of  you,  and  he'll  be  ever  so  pleased. 
May  I  come  and  fetch  you?  When?  To-morrow  after 
noon  about  three?  Are  you  quite  sure  you  don't  mind?' 

Margaret  was  quite  sure;  for  the  prospect  of  seeing 
an  old  friend  of  her  father's,  and  one  whom  she  herself 
remembered  well,  was  pleasant  just  then.  She  was 
groping  for  something  she  had  lost,  and  the  merest 
thread  was  worth  following. 

'If  you  like  I'll  sing  for  him,'  she  said. 

'Oh,  he  simply  hates  music!'  answered  Lady  Maud, 
with  unconscious  indifference  to  the  magnificence  of 
such  an  offer  from  the  greatest  lyric  soprano  alive. 

Margaret  laughed  in  spite  of  herself. 

'Do  you  hate  music  too?'  she  asked. 

'No,  indeed!  I  could  listen  to  you  for  ever.  But 
my  father  is  quite  different.  I  believe  he  hears  half  a 
note  higher  with  one  ear  than  with  the  other.  At  all 
events  the  effect  of  music  on  him  is  dreadful.  He  be 
haves  like  a  cat  in  a  thunderstorm.  If  you  want  to 


170  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vn 

please  him,  talk  to  him  about  old  bindings.  Next  to 
shooting  he  likes  bindings  better  than  anything  in  the 
world  —  in  fact  he's  a  capital  bookbinder  himself.' 

At  this  juncture  Mustapha  Pasha's  pale  and  spiritual 
face  appeared  between  the  curtains  of  the  small  room, 
and  he  interrupted  the  conversation  by  a  single  word. 

'Bridge?' 

Lady  Maud  was  on  her  feet  in  an  instant. 

'  Rather!' 

'Do  you  play?'  asked  the  Ambassador,  turning  to 
Margaret,  who  rose  more  slowly. 

'Very  badly.     I  would  rather  not.' 

The  diplomatist  looked  disappointed,  and  she  noticed 
his  expression,  and  suspected  that  he  would  feel  himself 
obliged  to  talk  to  her  instead  of  playing. 

'I'm  very  fond  of  looking  on,'  she  added  quickly,  'if 
you  will  let  me  sit  beside  you.' 

They  went  back  to  the  drawing-room,  and  presently 
the  celebrated  Senorita  da  Cordova,  who  was  more 
accustomed  to  being  the  centre  of  interest  than  she 
realised,  felt  that  she  was  nobody  at  all,  as  she  sat  at 
her  host's  elbow  watching  the  game  through  a  cloud  of 
suffocating  cigarette  smoke.  Even  old  Griggs,  who 
detested  cards,  had  sacrificed  himself  in  order  to  make 
up  the  second  table.  As  for  Logo  the  ti,  he  was  too  tact 
ful  to  refuse  a  game  in  which  every  one  knew  him  to  be 
a  past  master,  in  order  to  sit  out  and  talk  to  her  the 
whole  evening. 

Margaret  watched  the  players  with  some  little  interest 
at  first.  The  disagreeable  Mr.  Feist  lost  and  became 


CHAP,  vii  THE  PRIMADONNA  171 

even  more  disagreeable,  and  Margaret  reflected  that 
whatever  he  might  be  he  was  certainly  not  an  adven 
turer,  for  she  had  seen  a  good  many  of  the  class.  The 
Ambassador  lost  even  more,  but  with  the  quiet  indiffer 
ence  of  a  host  who  plays  because  his  guests  like  that 
form  of  amusement.  Lady  Maud  and  the  barrister 
were  partners,  and  seemed  to  be  winning  a  good  deal; 
the  peer  whose  hobby  was  applied  science  revoked  and 
did  dreadful  things  with  his  trumps,  but  nobody  seemed 
to  care  in  the  least,  except  the  barrister,  who  was  no 
respecter  of  persons,  and  had  fought  his  way  to  celebrity 
by  terrorising  juries  and  bullying  the  Bench. 

At  last  Margaret  let  her  head  rest  against  the  back  of 
her  comfortable  chair,  and  when  she  closed  her  eyes 
because  the  cigarette  smoke  made  them  smart,  she  for 
got  to  open  them  again,  and  went  sound  asleep;  for  she 
was  a  healthy  young  person,  and  had  eaten  a  good 
dinner,  and  on  evenings  when  she  did  not  sing  she  was 
accustomed  to  go  to  bed  at  ten  o'clock,  if  not  earlier. 

No  one  even  noticed  that  she  was  sleeping,  and  the 
game  went  on  till  nearly  midnight,  when  she  was  awak 
ened  by  the  sound  of  voices,  and  sprang  to  her  feet  with 
the  impression  of  having  done  something  terribly  rude. 
Every  one  was  standing,  the  smoke  was  as  thick  as  ever, 
and  it  was  tempered  by  a  smell  of  Scotch  whisky. 
The  men  looked  more  or  less  tired,  but  Lady  Maud  had 
not  turned  a  hair. 

The  peer,  holding  a  tall  glass  of  weak  whisky  and  soda 
in  his  hand,  and  blinking  through  his  gold-rimmed 
spectacles,  asked  her  if  she  were  going  anywhere  else. 


172  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vii 

'There's  nothing  to  go  to  yet/  she  said  rather  regret- 
fully. 

1  There  are  women's  clubs/  suggested  Logotheti. 

' That's  the  objection  to  them/  answered  the  beauty 
with  more  sarcasm  than  grammatical  sequence. 

'  Bridge  till  all  hours,  though/  observed  the  barrister. 

'I'd  give  something  to  spend  an  evening  at  a  smart 
women's  club/  said  the  playwright  in  a  musing  tone. 
'Is  it  true  that  the  Crown  Prince  of  Persia  got  into  the 
one  in  May  fair  as  a  waiter?' 

'  They  don't  have  waiters, '  said  Lady  Maud.  '  Nothing 
is  ever  true.  I  must  be  going  home.' 

Margaret  was  only  too  glad  to  go  too.  When  they 
were  downstairs  she  heard  a  footman  ask  Lady  Maud 
if  he  should  call  a  hansom  for  her.  He  evidently  knew 
that  she  had  no  carriage. 

'May  I  take  you  home?'  Margaret  asked. 

'Oh,  please  do!'  answered  the  beauty  with  alacrity. 
'It's  awfully  good  of  you!' 

It  was  raining  as  the  two  handsome  women  got  into 
the  singer's  comfortable  brougham. 

'Isn't  there  room  for  me  too?'  asked  Logotheti, 
putting  his  head  in  before  the  footman  could  shut  the 
door. 

'Don't  be  such  a  baby/  answered  Lady  Maud  in  a 
displeased  tone. 

The  Greek  drew  back  with  a  laugh  and  put  up  his 
umbrella;  Lady  Maud  told  the  footman  where  to  go, 
and  the  carriage  drove  away. 

'You  must  have  had  a  dull  evening/  she  said. 


CHAP.  VII  THE  PRIMADONNA  173 

'I  was  sound  asleep  most  of  the  time/  Margaret 
answered.  'I'm  afraid  the  Ambassador  thought  me 
very  rude.' 

'Because  you  went  to  sleep?  I  don't  believe  he  even 
noticed  it.  And  if  he  did,  why  should  you  mind?  No 
body  cares  what  anybody  does  nowadays.  We've  sim 
plified  life  since  the  days  of  our  fathers.  We  think 
more  of  the  big  things  than  they  did,  and  much  less  of 
the  little  ones.' 

'All  the  same,  I  wish  I  had  kept  awake!' 

'Nonsense!'  retorted  Lady  Maud.  'What  is  the  use 
of  being  famous  if  you  cannot  go  to  sleep  when  you  are 
sleepy?  This  is  a  bad  world  as  it  is,  but  it  would  be 
intolerable  if  one  had  to  keep  up  one's  school-room 
manners  all  one's  life,  and  sit  up  straight  and  spell 
properly,  as  if  Society,  with  a  big  S,  were  a  governess 
that  could  send  us  to  bed  without  our  supper  if  we 
didn't!' 

Margaret  laughed  a  little,  but  there  was  no  ripple  in 
Lady  Maud's  delicious  voice  as  she  made  these  singular 
statements.  She  was  profoundly  in  earnest. 

'The  public  is  my  schoolmistress,'  said  Margaret. 
'I'm  so  used  to  being  looked  at  and  listened  to  on  the 
stage  that  I  feel  as  if  people  were  always  watching  me 
and  criticising  me,  even  when  I  go  out  to  dinner.' 

'I've  no  right  at  all  to  give  you  my  opinion,  because 
I'm  nobody  in  particular,'  answered  Lady  Maud,  'and 
you  are  tremendously  famous  and  all  that!  But  you'll 
make  yourself  miserable  for  nothing  if  you  get  into  the 
way  of  caring  about  anybody's  opinion  of  you,  except 


174  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vii 

on  the  stage.  And  you'll  end  by  making  the  other 
people  uncomfortable  too,  because  you'll  make  them 
think  that  you  mean  to  teach  them  manners!' 

'Heaven  forbid!'    Margaret  laughed  again. 

The  carriage  stopped,  and  Lady  Maud  thanked  her, 
bade  her  good-night,  and  got  out. 

'No/  she  said,  as  the  footman  was  going  to  ring  the 
bell,  'I  have  a  latch-key,  thank  you/ 

It  was  a  small  house  in  Charles  Street,  Berkeley 
Square,  and  the  windows  were  quite  dark.  There  was 
not  even  a  light  in  the  hall  when  Margaret  saw  Lady 
Maud  open  the  front  door  and  disappear  within. 

Margaret  went  over  the  little  incidents  of  the  evening 
as  she  drove  home  alone,  and  felt  better  satisfied  with 
herself  than  she  had  been  since  Lushington's  visit,  in 
spite  of  having  deliberately  gone  to  sleep  inMustapha 
Pasha's  drawing-room.  No  one  had  made  her  feel  that 
she  was  changed  except  for  the  better,  and  Lady  Maud, 
who  was  most  undoubtedly  a  smart  woman  of  the 
world,  had  taken  a  sudden  fancy  to  her.  Margaret  told 
herself  that  this  would  be  impossible  if  she  were  ever 
so  little  vulgarised  by  her  stage  life,  and  in  this  reflec 
tion  she  consoled  herself  for  what  Lushington  had  said, 
and  nursed  her  resentment  against  him. 

The  small  weaknesses  of  celebrities  are  sometimes 
amazing.  There  was  a  moment  that  evening,  as  she 
stood  before  her  huge  looking-glass  before  undressing 
and  scrutinised  her  face  in  it,  when  she  would  have 
given  her  fame  and  her  fortune  to  be  Lady  Maud,  who 
trusted  to  a  passing  hansom  or  an  acquaintance's  car- 


CHAP.  VII  THE   PRIMADONNA  175 

riage  for  getting  home  from  an  Embassy,  who  let 
herself  into  a  dark  and  cheerless  little  house  with  a  latch 
key,  who  was  said  to  be  married  to  a  slippery  foreigner, 
and  about  whom  the  gossips  invented  unedifying  tales. 

Margaret  wondered  whether  Lady  Maud  would  ever 
think  of  changing  places  with  her,  to  be  a  goddess  for  a 
few  hours  every  week,  to  have  more  money  than  she 
could  spend  on  herself,  and  to  be  pursued  with  requests 
for  autographs  and  grand  pianos,  not  to  mention  invita 
tions  to  supper  from  those  supernal  personages  whose 
uneasy  heads  wear  crowns  or  itch  for  them;  and  Senorita 
da  Cordova  told  herself  rather  petulantly  that  Lady 
Maud  would  rather  starve  than  be  the  most  successful 
soprano  that  ever  trilled  on  the  high  A  till  the  house 
yelled  with  delight,  and  the  royalties  held  up  their 
stalking-glasses  to  watch  the  fluttering  of  her  throat, 
if  perchance  they  might  see  how  the  pretty  noise  was 
made. 

But  at  this  point  Margaret  Donne  was  a  little  ashamed 
of  herself,  and  went  to  bed ;  and  she  dreamt  that  Edmund 
Lushington  had  suddenly  taken  to  wearing  a  little 
moustache,  very  much  turned  up  and  flattened  on  his 
cheeks,  and  a  single  emerald  for  a  stud,  which  cast  a 
greenish  refulgence  round  it  upon  a  shirt-front  that  was 
hideously  shiny;  and  the  effect  of  these  changes  in  his 
appearance  was  to  make  him  perfectly  odious. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LORD  CREEDMORE  had  begun  life  as  a  poor  barrister, 
with  no  particular  prospects,  had  entered  the  House  of 
Commons  early,  and  had  been  a  hard-working  member 
of  Parliament  till  he  had  inherited  a  title  and  a  relatively 
exiguous  fortune  when  he  was  over  fifty  by  the  unex 
pected  death  of  his  uncle  and  both  the  latter 's  sons 
within  a  year.  He  had  married  young;  his  wife  was  the 
daughter  of  a  Yorkshire  country  gentleman,  and  had 
blessed  him  with  ten  children,  who  were  all  alive,  and 
of  whom  Lady  Maud  was  not  the  youngest.  He  was 
always  obliged  to  make  a  little  calculation  to  remember 
how  old  she  was,  and  whether  she  was  the  eighth  or  the 
ninth.  There  were  three  sons  and  seven  daughters. 
The  sons  were  all  in  the  army,  and  all  stood  between 
six  and  seven  feet  in  their  stockings;  the  daughters 
were  all  good-looking,  but  none  was  as  handsome  as 
Maud;  they  were  all  married,  and  all  but  she  had  chil 
dren.  Lady  Creedmore  had  been  a  beauty  too,  but  at 
the  present  time  she  was  stout  and  gouty,  had  a  bad 
temper,  and  alternately  soothed  and  irritated  her  com 
plaint  and  her  disposition  by  following  cures  or  com 
mitting  imprudences.  Her  husband,  who  was  now  over 
sixty,  had  never  been  ill  a  day  in  his  life;  he  was  as  lean 
and  tough  as  a  greyhound  and  as  active  as  a  schoolboy, 
a  good  rider,  and  a  crack  shot. 

176 


CHAP.  VIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  177 

His  connection  with  this  tale,  apart  from  the  friend 
ship  which  grew  up  between  Margaret  and  Lady  Maud, 
lies  in  the  fact  that  his  land  in  Derbyshire  adjoined  the 
estate  which  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  bought  and  re-named 
after  himself.  It  was  here  that  Lady  Maud  and  the 
American  magnate  had  first  met,  two  years  after  her 
marriage,  when  she  had  come  home  on  a  long  visit, 
very  much  disillusionised  as  to  the  supposed  advantages 
of  the  marriage  bond  as  compared  with  the  freedom  of 
a  handsome  English  girl  of  three-and-twenty,  who  is 
liked  in  her  set  and  has  the  run  of  a  score  of  big  country 
houses  without  any  chaperonial  encumbrance.  For  the 
chaperon  is  going  down  to  the  shadowy  kingdom  of  the 
extinct,  and  is  already  reckoned  with  dodos,  stage 
coaches,  muzzle  loaders,  crinolines,  Southey's  poems, 
the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Benjamin  Franklin's  reputa 
tion,  the  British  workman,  and  the  late  Herbert  Spencer's 
philosophy. 

On  the  previous  evening  Lady  Maud  had  not  told 
Margaret  that  Lord  Creedmore  lived  in  Surrey,  having 
let  his  town  house  since  his  youngest  daughter  had 
married.  She  now  explained  that  it  would  be  absurd 
to  think  of  driving  such  a  distance  when  one  could  go 
almost  all  the  way  by  train.  The  singer  was  rather 
scared  at  the  prospect  of  possibly  missing  trains,  waiting 
in  draughty  stations,  and  getting  wet  by  a  shower;  she 
was  accustomed  to  think  nothing  of  driving  twenty 
miles  in  a  closed  carriage  to  avoid  the  slightest  risk  of 
a  wetting. 

But  Lady  Maud  piloted  her  safely,  and  showed  an 


178  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  VIII 

intimate  knowledge  of  the  art  of  getting  about  by  public 
conveyances  which  amazed  her  companion.  She  seemed 
to  know  by  instinct  the  difference  between  one  train 
and  another,  when  all  looked  just  alike,  and  when  she 
had  to  ask  a  question  of  a  guard  or  a  porter  her  inquiry 
was  met  with  business-like  directness  and  brevity,  and 
commanded  the  respect  which  all  officials  feel  for  people 
who  do  not  speak  to  them  without  a  really  good  reason 
—  so  different  from  their  indulgent  superiority  when 
we  enter  into  friendly  conversation  with  them. 

The  journey  ended  in  a  walk  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  the  station  to  the  gate  of  the  small  park  in  which 
the  house  stood.  Lady  Maud  said  she  was  sorry  she 
had  forgotten  to  telephone  for  a  trap  to  be  sent  down, 
but  added  cheerfully  that  the  walk  would  do  Margaret 
good. 

'You  know  your  way  wonderfully  well/  Margaret 
said. 

'Yes/  answered  her  companion  carelessly.  'I  don't 
think  I  could  lose  myself  in  London,  from  Limehouse  to 
Wormwood  Scrubs.7 

She  spoke  quite  naturally,  as  if  it  were  not  in  the 
least  surprising  that  a  smart  woman  of  the  world  should 
possess  such  knowledge. 

'You  must  have  a  marvellous  memory  for  places/ 
Margaret  ventured  to  say. 

'Why?  Because  I  know  my  way  about?  I  walk  a 
great  deal,  that's  all.' 

Margaret  wondered  whether  the  Countess  Leven  habit 
ually  took  her  walks  in  the  direction  of  Limehouse  in 


CHAP,  vin  THE  PRIMADONNA  179 

the  east  or  Shepherd's  Bush  in  the  west;  and  if  so,  why? 
As  for  the  distance,  the  thoroughbred  looked  as  if  she 
could  do  twenty  miles  without  turning  a  hair,  and 
Margaret  wished  she  would  not  walk  quite  so  fast,  for, 
like  all  great  singers,  she  herself  easily  got  out  of  breath 
if  she  was  hurried;  it  was  not  the  distance  that  surprised 
her,  however,  but  the  fact  that  Lady  Maud  should  ever 
visit  such  regions. 

They  reached  the  house  and  found  Lord  Creedmore 
in  the  library,  his  lame  foot  on  a  stool  and  covered  up 
with  a  chudder.  His  clear  brown  eyes  examined  Mar 
garet's  face  attentively  while  he  held  her  hand  in  his. 

'So  you  are  little  Margery/  he  said  at  last,  with  a 
very  friendly  smile.  'Do  you  remember  me  at  all,  my 
dear?  I  suppose  I  have  changed  almost  more  than  you 
have/ 

Margaret  remembered  him  very  well  indeed  as  Mr. 
Foxwell,  who  used  always  to  bring  her  certain  particu 
larly  delicious  chocolate  wafers  whenever  he  came  to 
see  her  father  in  Oxford,  She  sat  down  beside  him  and 
looked  at  his  face  —  clean-shaven,  kindly,  and  energetic 
—  the  face  of  a  clever  lawyer  and  yet  of  a  keen  sports 
man,  a  type  you  will  hardly  find  out  of  England. 

Lady  Maud  left  the  two  alone  after  a  few  minutes, 
and  Margaret  found  herself  talking  of  her  childhood 
and  her  old  home,  as  if  nothing  very  much  worth  men 
tioning  had  happened  in  her  life  during  the  last  ten  or 
a  dozen  years.  While  she  answered  her  new  friend's 
questions  and  asked  others  of  him  she  unconsciously 
looked  about  the  room.  The  writing-table  was  not  far 


180  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  viil 

from  her,  and  she  saw  on  it  two  photographs  in  plain 
ebony  frames;  one  was  of  her  father,  the  other  was  a 
likeness  of  Lady  Maud.  Little  by  little  she  understood 
that  her  father  had  been  Lord  Creedmore's  best  friend 
from  their  schoolboy  days  till  his  death.  Yet  although 
they  had  constantly  exchanged  short  visits,  the  one 
living  in  Oxford  and  the  other  chiefly  in  town,  their 
wives  had  hardly  known  each  other,  and  their  children 
had  never  met. 

'Take  him  all  in  all/  said  the  old  gentleman  gravely, 
'Donne  was  the  finest  fellow  I  ever  knew,  and  the  only 
real  friend  I  ever  had.' 

His  eyes  turned  to  the  photograph  on  the  table  with 
a  far-away  manly  regret  that  went  to  Margaret's  heart. 
Her  father  had  been  a  reticent  man,  and  as  there  was 
no  reason  why  he  should  have  talked  much  about  his 
absent  friend  Foxwell,  it  was  not  surprising  that  Mar 
garet  should  never  have  known  how  close  the  tie  was 
that  bound  them.  But  now,  coming  unawares  upon 
the  recollection  of  that  friendship  in  the  man  who  had 
survived,  she  felt  herself  drawn  to  him  as  if  he  were  of 
her  own  blood,  and  she  thought  she  understood  why 
she  had  liked  his  daughter  so  much  at  first  sight. 

They  talked  for  more  than  half  an  hour,  and  Margaret 
did  not  even  notice  that  he  had  not  once  alluded  to  her 
profession,  and  that  she  had  so  far  forgotten  herself 
for  the  time  as  not  to  miss  the  usual  platitudes  about 
her  marvellous  voice  and  her  astoundingly  successful 
career. 

'I  hope  you'll  come  and  stop  with  us  in  Derbyshire 


CHAP.  VIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  181 

in  September/  he  said  at  last.  Tin  quite  ashamed  to 
ask  you  there,  for  we  are  dreadfully  dull  people;  but  it 
would  give  us  a  great  deal  of  pleasure.' 

'  You  are  very  kind  indeed/  Margaret  said.  'I  should 
be  delighted  to  come.' 

'Some  of  our  neighbours  might  interest  you/  said 
Lord  Creedmore.  '  There's  Mr.  Van  Torp,  for  instance, 
the  American  millionaire.  His  land  joins  mine.' 

'  Really?' 

Margaret  wondered  if  she  should  ever  again  go  any 
where  without  hearing  of  Mr.  Van  Torp. 

'Yes.  He  bought  Oxley  Paddox  some  time  ago  and 
promptly  re-christened  it  Torp  Towers.  But  he's  not 
a  bad  fellow.  Maud  likes  him,  though  Lady  Creedmore 
calls  him  names.  He  has  such  a  nice  little  girl  —  at 
least,  it's  not  exactly  his  child,  I  believe/  his  lordship 
ran  on  rather  hurriedly;  'but  he's  adopted  her,  I  under 
stand —  at  least,  I  fancy  so.  At  all  events  she  was 
born  deaf,  poor  little  thing;  but  he  has  had  her 
taught  to  speak  and  to  understand  from  the  lips. 
Awfully  pretty  child!  Maud  delights  in  her.  Nice 
governess,  too  —  I  forget  her  name;  but  she's  a  faithful 
sort  of  woman.  It's  a  dreadfully  hard  position,  don't 
you  know,  to  be  a  governess  if  you're  young  and  good- 
looking,  and  though  Van  Torp  is  rather  a  decent  sort, 
I  never  feel  quite  sure  —  Maud  likes  him  immensely, 
it's  true,  and  that  is  a  good  sign;  but  Maud  is  utterly 
mad  about  a  lot  of  things,  and  besides,  she's  singularly 
well  able  to  take  care  of  herself.' 

'Yes/  said  Margaret;  but  she  thought  of  the  story 


182  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vin 

Logo  the  ti  had  told  her  on  the  previous  evening.  'I 
know  Mr.  Van  Torp,  and  the  little  girl  and  Miss  More/ 
she  said  after  a  moment.  'We  came  over  in  the  same 
steamer.' 

She  thought  it  was  only  fair  to  say  that  she  had  met 
the  people  of  whom  he  had  been  speaking.  There  was 
no  reason  why  Lord  Creedmore  should  be  surprised  by 
this,  and  he  only  nodded  and  smiled  pleasantly. 

'All  the  better.  I  shall  set  Maud  on  you  to  drag 
you  down  to  Derbyshire  in  September, '  he  said.  '  Women 
never  have  anything  to  do  in  September.  Let  me  see 
—  you're  an  actress,  aren't  you,  my  dear?' 

Margaret  laughed.  It  was  positively  delightful  to 
feel  that  he  had  never  heard  of  her  theatrical  career. 

'No;  I'm  a  singer,'  she  said.  'My  stage  name  is 
Cordova.' 

'Oh  yes,  yes,'  answered  Lord  Creedmore,  very  vaguely. 
'It's  the  same  thing  —  you  cannot  possibly  have  any 
thing  to  do  in  September,  can  you?' 

'We  shall  see.     I  hope  not,  this  year.' 

'If  it's  not  very  indiscreet  of  me,  as  an  old  friend, 
you  know,  do  you  manage  to  make  a  living  by  the 
stage?' 

'Oh  —  fair!'     Margaret  almost  laughed  again. 

Lady  Maud  returned  at  this  juncture,  and  Margaret 
rose  to  go,  feeling  that  she  had  stayed  long  enough. 

'Margery  has  half  promised  to  come  to  us  in  Septem 
ber,'  said  Lord  Creedmore  to  his  daughter,  'You  don't 
mind  if  I  call  you  Margery,  do  you?'  he  asked,  turning 
to  Margaret.  'I  cannot  call  you  Miss  Donne  since  you 


CHAP.  Tin  THE   PRIMADONNA  183 

really  remember  the  chocolate  wafers!  You  shall  have 
some  as  soon  as  I  can  go  to  see  you!' 

Margaret  loved  the  name  she  had  been  called  by  as  a 
child.  Mrs.  Rushmore  had  severely  eschewed  dimin 
utives. 

'  Margery/  repeated  Lady  Maud  thoughtfully.  '  I  like 
the  name  awfully  well.  Do  you  mind  calling  me  Maud? 
We  ought  to  have  known  each  other  when  we  were  in 
pinafores ! ' 

In  this  way  it  happened  that  Margaret  found  herself 
unexpectedly  on  something  like  intimate  terms  with  her 
father's  friend  and  the  latter's  favourite  child  less  than 
twenty-four  hours  after  meeting  Lady  Maud,  and  this  was 
how  she  was  asked  to  their  place  in  the  country  for  the 
month  of  September.  But  that  seemed  very  far  away. 

Lady  Maud  took  Margaret  home,  as  she  had  brought 
her,  without  making  her  wait  more  than  three  minutes 
for  a  train,  without  exposing  her  to  a  draught,  and 
without  letting  her  get  wet,  all  of  which  would  seem 
easy  enough  to  an  old  Londoner,  but  was  marvellous 
in  the  eyes  of  the  young  Primadonna,  and  conveyed  to 
her  an  idea  of  freedom  that  was  quite  new  to  her.  She 
remembered  that  she  used  to  be  proud  of  her  indepen 
dence  when  she  first  went  into  Paris  from  Versailles 
alone  for  her  singing  lessons;  but  that  trip,  contrasted 
with  the  one  from  her  own  house  to  Lord  Creedmore's 
on  the  Surrey  side,  was  like  going  out  for  an  hour's 
sail  in  a  pleasure-boat  on  a  summer's  afternoon  com 
pared  with  working  a  sea-going  vessel  safely  through 
an  intricate  and  crowded  channel  at  night. 


184  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

Margaret  noticed,  too,  that  although  Lady  Maud  was 
a  very  striking  figure,  she  was  treated  with  respect  in 
places  where  the  singer  knew  instinctively  that  if  she 
herself  had  been  alone  she  would  have  been  afraid  that 
men  would  speak  to  her.  She  knew  very  well  how  to 
treat  them  if  they  did,  and  was  able  to  take  care  of 
herself  -if  she  chose  to  travel  alone;  but  she  ran  the 
risk  of  being  annoyed  where  the  beautiful  thoroughbred 
was  in  no  danger  at  all.  That  was  the  difference. 

Lady  Maud  left  her  at  her  own  door  and  went  off  on 
foot,  though  the  hansom  that  had  brought  them  from 
the  Baker  Street  Station  was  still  lurking  near. 

Margaret  had  told  Logotheti  to  come  and  see  her 
late  in  the  afternoon,  and  as  she  entered  the  hall  she 
was  surprised  to  hear  voices  upstairs.  She  asked  the 
servant  who  was  waiting. 

With  infinite  difficulty  in  the  matter  of  pronunciation 
the  man  informed  her  that  the  party  consisted  of 
Monsieur  Logotheti,  Herr  Schreiermeyer,  Signor  Strom- 
boli,  the  Signorina  Baci-Roventi,  and  Fraulein  Ottilie 
Braun.  The  four  professionals  had  come  at  the  very 
moment  when  Logotheti  had  gained  admittance  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  an  appointment,  which  was  true, 
and  they  had  refused  to  be  sent  away.  In  fact,  unless 
he  had  called  the  police  the  poor  footman  could  not 
have  kept  them  out.  The  Signorina  Baci-Roventi  alone, 
black-browed,  muscular,  and  five  feet  ten  in  her  shoes, 
would  have  been  almost  a  match  for  him  alone;  but  she 
was  backed  by  Signor  Pompeo  Stromboli,  who  weighed 
fifteen  stone  in  his  fur  coat,  was  as  broad  as  he  was 


CHAP.  VIII  THE   PKIMADONNA  185 

long,  and  had  been  seen  to  run  off  the  stage  with  Madame 
Bonanni  in  his  arms  while  he  yelled  a  high  G  that  could 
have  been  heard  in  Westminster  if  the  doors  had  been 
open.  Before  the  onslaught  of  such  terrific  foreigners 
a  superior  London  footman  could  only  protest  with 
dignity  and  hold  the  door  open  for  them  to  pass.  Braver 
men  than  he  had  quailed  before  Schreiermeyer's  stony 
eye,  and  gentle  little  Fraulein  Ottilie  slipped  in  like  a 
swallow  in  the  track  of  a  storm. 

Margaret  felt  suddenly  inclined  to  shut  herself  up 
in  her  room  and  send  word  that  she  had  a  headache 
and  could  not  see  them.  But  Schreiermeyer  was  there. 
He  would  telephone  for  three  doctors,  and  would  refuse 
to  leave  the  house  till  they  signed  an  assurance  that  she 
was  perfectly  well  and  able  to  begin  rehearsing  the 
Elisir  d'Amore  the  next  morning.  That  was  what 
Schreiermeyer  would  do,  and  when  she  next  met  him 
he  would  tell  her  that  he  would  have  'no  nonsense,  no 
stupid  stuff.'  and  that  she  had  signed  an  engagement 
and  must  sing  or  pay. 

She  had  never  shammed  an  illness,  either,  and  she 
did  not  mean  to  begin  now.  It  was  only  that  for  two 
blessed  hours  and  more,  with  her  dead  father's  best 
friend  and  Maud,  she  had  felt  like  her  old  self  again, 
and  had  dreamt  that  she  was  with  her  own  people. 
She  had  even  disliked  the  prospect  of  seeing  Logotheti 
after  that,  and  she  felt  a  much  stronger  repugnance 
for  her  theatrical  comrades.  She  went  to  her  own  room 
before  meeting  them,  and  she  sighed  as  she  stood  before 
the  tall  looking-glass  for  a  moment  after  taking  off  her 


186  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

coat  and  hat.  In  pulling  out  the  hat-pins  her  hair 
had  almost  come  down,  and  Alphonsine  proposed  to  do 
it  over  again,  but  Margaret  was  impatient. 

'Give  me  something  —  a  veil,  or  anything/  she  said 
impatiently.  'They  are  waiting  for  me.' 

The  maid  instantly  produced  from  a  near  drawer  a 
peach-coloured  veil  embroidered  with  green  and  gold. 
It  was  a  rather  vivid  modern  Turkish  one  given  her  by 
Logotheti,  and  she  wrapped  it  quickly  over  her  disor 
dered  hair,  like  a  sort  of  turban,  tucking  one  end  in,  and 
left  the  room  almost  without  glancing  at  the  glass  again. 
She  was  discontented  with  herself  now  for  having  dreamt 
of  ever  again  being  anything  but  what  she  was  —  a 
professional  singer. 

The  little  party  greeted  her  noisily  as  she  entered  the 
music-room.  Her  comrades  had  not  seen  her  since  she 
had  left  them  in  New  York,  and  the  consequence  was 
that  Signorina  Baci-Roventi  kissed  her  on  both  cheeks 
with  dramatic  force,  and  she  kissed  Fraulein  Ottilie  on 
both  cheeks,  and  Pompeo  Stromboli  offered  himself  for 
a  like  favour  and  had  to  be  fought  off,  while  Schreier- 
meyer  looked  on  gravely,  very  much  as  a  keeper  at  the 
Zoo  watches  the  gambols  of  the  animals  in  his  charge; 
but  Logotheti  shook  hands  very  quietly,  well  perceiving 
that  his  chance  of  pleasing  her  just  then  lay  in  being 
profoundly  respectful  while  the  professionals  were  over- 
poweringly  familiar.  His  almond-shaped  eyes  asked  her 
how  in  the  world  she  could  stand  it  all,  and  she  felt 
uncomfortable  at  the  thought  that  she  was  used  to  it. 

Besides,  these  good  people  really  liked  her.    The  only 


CHAP,  viii  THE  PRIMADONNA  187 

members  of  the  profession  who  hated  her  were  the 
other  lyric  sopranos.  Schreiermeyer,  rapacious  and 
glittering,  had  a  photograph  of  her  hideously  enamelled 
in  colours  inside  the  cover  of  his  watch,  and  the  fac 
simile  of  her  autograph  was  engraved  across  the  lid  of 
his  silver  cigarette-case.  Pompeo  Stromboli  carried 
some  of  her  hair  in  a  locket  which  he  wore  on  his  chain 
between  two  amulets  against  the  Evil  Eye.  Fraulein 
Ottilie  treasured  a  little  water-colour  sketch  of  her  as 
Juliet  on  which  Margaret  had  written  a  few  friendly 
words,  and  the  Baci-Roventi  actually  went  to  the 
length  of  asking  her  advice  about  the  high  notes  the 
contralto  has  to  sing  in  such  operas  as  Semiramide. 
It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  more  sincere  proof  of 
affection  and  admiration  than  this. 

Margaret  knew  that  the  greeting  was  genuine  and 
that  she  ought  to  be  pleased,  but  at  the  first  moment 
the  noise  and  the  kissing  and  the  rough  promiscuity  of 
it  all  disgusted  her. 

Then  she  saw  that  all  had  brought  her  little  presents, 
which  were  arranged  side  by  side  on  the  piano,  and  she 
suddenly  remembered  that  it  was  her  birthday.  They 
were  small  things  without  value,  intended  to  make  her 
laugh.  Stromboli  had  sent  to  Italy  for  a  Neapolitan 
clay  figure  of  a  shepherd,  cleverly  modelled  and  painted, 
and  vaguely  resembling  himself  —  he  had  been  a  Cala- 
brian  goatherd.  The  contralto,  who  came  from  Bologna, 
the  city  of  sausages,  gave  Margaret  a  tiny  pig  made  of 
silver  with  holes  in  his  back,  in  which  were  stuck  a 
number  of  quill  toothpicks. 


188  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

'You  will  think  of  me  when  you  use  them  at  table/ 
she  said,  charmingly  unconscious  of  English  prejudices. 

Schreiermeyer  presented  her  with  a  bronze  statuette 
of  Shylock  whetting  his  knife  upon  his  thigh. 

'It  will  encourage  you  to  sign  our  next  agreement/ 
he  observed  with  stony  calm.  'It  is  the  symbol  of 
business.  We  are  all  symbolic  nowadays/ 

Fraulein  Ottilie  Braun  had  wrought  a  remarkable 
little  specimen  of  German  sentiment.  She  had  made  a 
little  blue  pin-cushion  and  had  embroidered  some  little 
flowers  on  it  in  brown  silk.  Margaret  had  no  difficulty 
in  looking  pleased,  but  she  also  looked  slightly  puzzled. 

'They  are  forget-me-nots/  said  the  Fraulein,  'but 
because  my  name  is  Braun  I  made  them  brown.  You 
see?  So  you  will  remember  your  little  Braun  forget- 
me-not!' 

Margaret  laughed  at  the  primitively  simple  little  jest, 
but  she  was  touched  too,  and  somehow  she  felt  that  her 
eyes  were  not  quite  dry  as  she  kissed  the  good  little 
woman  again.  But  Logo  the  ti  could  not  understand  at 
all,  and  thought  it  all  extremely  silly.  He  did  not  like 
Margaret's  improvised  turban,  either,  though  he  recog 
nised  the  veil  as  one  he  had  given  her.  The  headdress 
was  not  classic,  and  he  did  not  think  it  becoming  to  the 
Victory  of  Samothrace. 

He  also  had  remembered  her  birthday  and  he  had  a 
small  offering  in  his  pocket,  but  he  could  not  give  it  to 
her  before  the  others.  Schreiermeyer  would  probably 
insist  on  looking  at  it  and  would  guess  its  value,  whereas 
Logotheti  was  sure  that  Margaret  would  not.  He  would 


CHAP,  viil  THE  PRIMADONNA  189 

give  it  to  her  when  they  were  alone,  and  would  tell  her 
that  it  was  nothing  but  a  seal  for  her  writing-case,  a 
common  green  stone  of  some  kind  with  a  little  Greek 
head  on  it;  and  she  would  look  at  it  and  think  it  pretty, 
and  take  it,  because  it  did  not  look  very  valuable  to  her 
unpractised  eye.  But  the  ' common  green  stone'  was 
a  great  emerald,  and  the  ' little  Greek  head'  was  an 
intaglio  of  Anacreon,  cut  some  two  thousand  and  odd 
hundred  years  ago  by  an  art  that  is  lost;  and  the  setting 
had  been  made  and  chiselled  for  Maria  de'  Medici  when 
she  married  Henry  the  Fourth  of  France.  Logo  the  ti 
liked  to  give  Margaret  things  vastly  more  rare  than  she 
guessed  them  to  be. 

Margaret  offered  her  visitors  tea,  and  she  and  Logo- 
theti  took  theirs  while  the  others  looked  on  or  devoured 
the  cake  and  bread  and  butter. 

'Tea?'  repeated  Signor  Stromboli.  'I  am  well.  Why 
should  I  take  tea?  The  tea  is  for  to  perspire  when  I 
have  a  cold.' 

The  Signorina  Baci-Roventi  laughed  at  him. 

'Do  you  not  know  that  the  English  drink  tea  before 
dinner  to  give  themselves  an  appetite?'  she  asked.  'It 
is  because  they  drink  tea  that  they  eat  so  much.' 

'All  the  more,'  answered  Stromboli.  'Do  you  not 
see  that  I  am  fat?  Why  should  I  eat  more?  Am  I  to 
turn  into  a  monument  of  Victor  Emanuel?' 

'You  eat  too  much  bread,'  said  Schreiermeyer  in  a 
resentful  tone. 

'It  is  my  vice,'  said  the  tenor,  taking  up  four  thin 
slices  of  bread  and  butter  together  and  popping  them 


190  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

all  into  his  mouth  without  the  least  difficulty.  'When 
I  see  bread,  I  eat  it.  I  eat  all  there  is.' 

'We  see  you  do/  returned  Schreiermeyer  bitterly. 

'I  cannot  help  it.  Why  do  they  bring  bread?  They 
are  in  league  to  make  me  fat.  The  waiters  know  me. 
I  go  into  the  Carlton;  the  head-waiter  whispers;  a  waiter 
brings  a  basket  of  bread;  I  eat  it  all.  I  go  into  Boisin's, 
or  Henry's;  the  head- waiter  whispers;  it  is  a  basket  of 
bread;  while  I  eat  a  few  eggs,  a  chicken,  a  salad,  a  tart 
or  two,  some  fruit,  cheese,  the  bread  is  all  gone.  I  am 
the  tomb  of  all  the  bread  in  the  world.  So  I  get  fat. 
There/  he  concluded  gravely,  'it  is  as  I  tell  you.  I 
have  eaten  all.' 

And  in  fact,  while  talking,  he  had  punctuated  each 
sentence  with  a  tiny  slice  or  two  of  thin  bread  and 
butter,  and  everybody  laughed,  except  Schreiermeyer, 
as  the  huge  singer  gravely  held  up  the  empty  glass  dish 
and  showed  it. 

'What  do  you  expect  of  me?'  he  asked.  'It  is  a  vice, 
and  I  am  not  Saint  Anthony,  to  resist  temptation.' 

'Perhaps/  suggested  Fraulein  Ottilie  timidly,  'if  you 
exercised  a  little  strength  of  character ' 

'Exercise?'  roared  Stromboli,  not  understanding  her, 
for  they  spoke  a  jargon  of  Italian,  German,  and  English. 
'Exercise?  The  more  I  exercise,  the  more  I  eat!  Ha, 
ha,  ha!  Exercise,  indeed!  You  talk  like  crazy!' 

'You  will  end  on  wheels/  said  Schreiermeyer  with 
cold  contempt.  'You  will  stand  on  a  little  truck  which 
will  be  moved  about  the  stage  from  below.  You  will 
be  lifted  to  Juliet's  balcony  by  a  hydraulic  crane.  But 


CHAP.  VIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  191 

you  shall  pay  for  the  machinery.  Oh  yes,  oh  yes!  I 
will  have  it  in  the  contract!  You  shall  be  weighed. 
So  much  flesh  to  move,  so  much  money.' 

'Shylock!'  suggested  Logotheti,  glancing  at  the  stat 
uette  and  laughing. 

'Yes,  Shy  lock  and  his  five  hundred  pounds  of  flesh/ 
answered  Schreiermeyer,  with  a  faint  smile  that  disap 
peared  again  at  once. 

'But  I  meant  character '  began  Fraulein  Ottilie, 

trying  to  go  back  and  get  in  a  word. 

' Character!'  cried  the  Baci-Roventi  with  a  deep  note 
that  made  the  open  piano  vibrate.  'His  stomach  is  his 
heart,  and  his  character  is  his  appetite!' 

She  bent  her  heavy  brows  and  fixed  her  gleaming 
black  eyes  on  him  with  a  tragic  expression. 

'"Let  them  cant  about  decorum  who  have  characters 
to  lose,"'  quoted  Logotheti  softly. 

This  delicate  banter  went  on  for  twenty  minutes, 
very  much  to  Schreiermeyer 's  inward  satisfaction,  for 
it  proved  that  at  least  four  members  of  his  company 
were  on  good  terms  with  him  and  with  each  other;  for 
when  they  had  a  grudge  against  him,  real  or  imaginary, 
they  became  sullen  and  silent  in  his  presence,  and  eyed 
him  with  the  coldly  ferocious  expression  of  china  dogs. 

At  last  they  all  rose  and  went  away  in  a  body,  leaving 
Margaret  with  Logotheti. 

'I  had  quite  forgotten  that  it  was  my  birthday,' 
she  said,  when  they  were  gone. 

'I've  brought  you  a  little  seal/  he  answered,  holding 
out  the  intaglio. 


192  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

She  took  it  and  looked  at  it. 

'How  pretty!'  she  exclaimed.  'It's  awfully  kind  of 
you  to  have  remembered  to-day,  and  I  wanted  a  seal 
very  much.' 

'It's  a  silly  little  thing,  just  a  head  on  some  sort  of 
green  stone.  But  I  tried  it  on  sealing-wax,  and  the 
impression  is  not  so  bad.  I  shall  be  very  happy  if  it's 
of  any  use,  for  I'm  always  puzzling  my  brain  to  find 
something  you  may  like.' 

'Thanks  very  much.  It's  the  thought  I  care  for/ 
She  laid  the  seal  on  the  table  beside  her  empty  cup. 
'And  now  that  we  are  alone,'  she  went  on,  'please  tell 
me.' 

'What?' 

'How  you  found  out  what  you  told  me  at  dinner 
last  night.' 

She  leant  back  in  the  chair,  raising  her  arms  and 
joining  her  hands  above  her  head  against  the  high  top 
of  the  chair,  and  stretching  herself  a  little.  The  attitude 
threw  the  curving  lines  of  her  figure  into  high  relief, 
and  was  careless  enough,  but  the  tone  in  which  she 
spoke  was  almost  one  of  command,  and  there  was  a 
sort  of  expectant  resentfulness  in  her  eyes  as  they 
watched  his  face  while  she  waited  for  his  answer.  She 
believed  that  he  had  paid  to  have  her  watched  by  some 
one  who  had  bribed  her  servants. 

'I  did  not  find  out  anything,'  he  said  quietly.  'I 
received  an  anonymous  letter  from  New  York  giving 
me  all  the  details  of  the  scene.  The  letter  was  written 
with  the  evident  intention  of  injuring  Mr.  Van  Torp. 


CHAP,  vill  THE  PRIMADONNA  193 

Whoever  wrote  it  must  have  heard  what  you  said  to 
each  other,  and  perhaps  he  was  watching  you  through 
the  keyhole.  It  is  barely  possible  that  by  some  accident 
he  overheard  the  scene  through  the  local  telephone,  if 
there  was  one  in  the  room.  Should  you  care  to  see 
that  part  of  the  letter  which  concerns  you?  It  is  not 
very  delicately  worded ! ' 

Margaret's  expression  had  changed;  she  had  dropped 
her  hands  and  was  leaning  forward,  listening  with 
interest. 

'No/  she  said,  'I  don't  care  to  see  the  letter,  but  who 
in  the  world  can  have  written  it?  You  say  it  was 
meant  to  injure  Mr.  Van  Torp  —  not  me.' 

'Yes.  There  is  nothing  against  you  in  it.  On  the 
contrary,  the  writer  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that 
there  never  was  a  word  breathed  against  your  reputation, 
in  order  to  prove  what  an  utter  brute  Van  Torp  must 
be.' 

'Tell  me/  Margaret  said,  'was  that  story  about  Lady 
Maud  in  the  same  letter?' 

'Oh  dear,  no!  That  is  supposed  to  have  happened 
the  other  day,  but  I  got  the  letter  last  winter.' 

'When?' 

'In  January,  I  think.' 

'He  came  to  see  me  soon  after  New  Year's  Day/  said 
Margaret.  '  I  wish  I  knew  who  told  —  I  really  don't 
believe  it  was  my  maid.' 

'I  took  the  letter  to  one  of  those  men  who  tell  char 
acter  by  handwriting/  answered  Logotheti.  'I  don't 
know  whether  you  believe  in  that,  but  I  do  a  little. 


194  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vm 

I  got  rather  a  queer  result,  considering  that  I  only 
showed  half-a-dozen  lines,  which  could  not  give  any 
idea  of  the  contents.' 

'What  did  the  man  say?7 

'He  said  the  writer  appeared  to  be  on  the  verge  of 
insanity,  if  not  actually  mad;  that  he  was  naturally  of 
an  accurate  mind,  with  ordinary  business  capacities, 
such  as  a  clerk  might  have,  but  that  he  had  received 
a  much  better  education  than  most  clerks  get,  and  must 
at  one  time  have  done  intellectual  work.  His  madness, 
the  man  said,  would  probably  take  some  violent  form.7 

'There's  nothing  very  definite  about  all  that/  Mar 
garet  observed.  'Why  in  the  world  should  the  creature 
have  written  to  you,  of  all  people,  to  destroy  Mr.  Van 
Torp's  character?7 

'The  interview  with  you  was  only  an  incident,7 
answered  Logo  the  ti.  'There  were  other  things,  all 
tending  to  show  that  he  is  not  a  safe  person  to  deal 
with.7 

'Why  should  you  ever  deal  with  him?7 

Logotheti  smiled. 

'There  are  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  men  in  different 
countries  who  are  regarded  as  the  organs  of  the  world's 
financial  body.  The  very  big  ones  are  the  vital  organs. 
Van  Torp  has  grown  so  much  of  late  that  he  is  probably 
one  of  them.  Some  people  are  good  enough  to  think 
that  I'm  another.  The  blood  of  the  financial  body  — 
call  it  gold,  or  credit,  or  anything  you  like  —  circulates 
through  all  the  organs,  and  if  one  of  the  great  vital 
ones  gets  out  of  order  the  whole  body  is  likely  to  suffer. 


CHAP.  VIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  195 

Suppose  that  Van  Torp  wished  to  do  something  with 
the  Nickel  Trust  in  Paris,  and  that  I  had  private  infor 
mation  to  the  effect  that  he  was  not  a  man  to  be  trusted, 
and  that  I  believed  this  information,  don't  you  see  that 
I  should  naturally  warn  my  friends  against  him,  and 
that  our  joint  weight  would  be  an  effective  obstacle  in 
his  way?' 

'Yes,  I  see  that.  But,  dear  me!  do  you  mean  to  say 
that  all  financiers  must  be  strictly  virtuous,  like  little 
woolly  white  lambs?' 

Margaret  laughed  carelessly.  If  Lushington  had 
heard  her,  his  teeth  would  have  been  set  on  edge,  but 
Logotheti  did  not  notice  the  shade  of  expression  and 
tone. 

'I  repeat  that  the  account  of  the  interview  with  you 
was  a  mere  incident,  thrown  in  to  show  that  Van  Torp 
occasionally  loses  his  head  and  behaves  like  a  madman.' 

'I  don't  want  to  see  the  letter,'  said  Margaret,  'but 
what  sort  of  accusations  did  it  contain?  Were  they 
all  of  the  same  kind?' 

'No.  There  was  one  other  thing  —  something  about 
a  little  girl  called  Ida,  who  is  supposed  to  be  the  daughter 
of  that  old  Alvah  Moon  who  robbed  your  mother.  You 
can  guess  the  sort  of  thing  the  letter  said  without  my 
telling  you.' 

Margaret  leaned  forward  and  poked  the  small  wood 
fire  with  a  pair  of  unnecessarily  elaborate  gilt  tongs, 
and  she  nodded,  for  she  remembered  how  Lord  Creed- 
more  had  mentioned  the  child  that  afternoon.  He  had 
hesitated  a  little,  and  had  then  gone  on  speaking  rather 


196  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vin 

hurriedly.  She  watched  the  sparks  fly  upward  each 
time  she  touched  the  log,  and  she  nodded  slowly. 

'What  are  you  thinking  of?'  asked  Logo  the  ti. 

But  she  did  not  answer  for  nearly  half  a  minute. 
She  was  reflecting  on  a  singular  little  fact  which  made 
itself  clear  to  her  just  then.  She  was  certainly  not  a 
child;  she  was  not  even  a  very  young  girl,  at  twenty- 
four;  she  had  never  been  prudish,  and  she  did  not  affect 
the  pre-Serpentine  innocence  of  Eve  before  the  fall. 
Yet  it  was  suddenly  apparent  to  her  that  because  she 
was  a  singer  men  treated  her  as  if  she  were  a  married 
woman,  and  would  have  done  so  if  she  had  been  even 
five  years  younger.  Talking  to  her  as  Margaret  Donne, 
in  Mrs.  Rushmore's  house,  two  years  earlier,  Logotheti 
would  not  have  approached  such  a  subject  as  little  Ida 
Moon's  possible  relation  to  Mr.  Van  Torp,  because  the 
Greek  had  been  partly  brought  up  in  England  and  had 
been  taught  what  one  might  and  might  not  say  to  a 
'nice  English  girl.'  Margaret  now  reflected  that  since 
the  day  she  had  set  foot  upon  the  stage  of  the  Opera 
she  had  apparently  ceased  to  be  a  '  nice  English  girl '  in 
the  eyes  of  men  of  the  world.  The  profession  of  singing 
in  public,  then,  presupposed  that  the  singer  was  no 
longer  the  more  or  less  imaginary  young  girl,  the  hot 
house  flower  of  the  social  garden,  whose  perfect  bloom 
the  merest  breath  of  worldly  knowledge  must  blight 
for  ever.  Margaret  might  smile  at  the  myth,  but  she 
could  not  ignore  the  fact  that  she  was  already  as  much 
detached  from  it  in  men's  eyes  as  if  she  had  entered 
the  married  state.  The  mere  fact  of  realising  that  the 


CHAP,  viii  THE  PRIMADONNA  197 

hothouse  blossom  was  part  of  the  social  legend  proved 
the  change  in  herself. 

'So  that  is  the  secret  about  the  little  girl/  she  said  at 
last.  Then  she  started  a  little,  as  if  she  had  made  a 
discovery.  'Good  heavens!'  she  exclaimed,  poking  the 
fire  sharply.  'He  cannot  be  as  bad  as  that  —  even  he!' 

'What  do  you  mean?'  asked  Logo  the  ti,  surprised. 

'No  —  really  —  it's  too  awful/  Margaret  said  slowly, 
to  herself.  'Besides/  she  added,  'one  has  no  right  to 
believe  an  anonymous  letter.' 

'The  writer  was  well  informed  about  you,  at  least/ 
observed  Logotheti.  'You  say  that  the  details  are  true.' 

'Absolutely.  That  makes  the  other  thing  all  the  more 
dreadful.' 

'It's  not  such  a  frightful  crime,  after  all/  Logotheti 
answered  with  a  little  surprise.  'Long  before  he  fell  in 
love  with  you  he  may  have  liked  some  one  else!  Such 
things  may  happen  in  every  man's  life.' 

'  That  one  thing  —  yes,  no  doubt.  But  you  either 
don't  know,  or  you  don't  realise  just  what  all  the  rest 
has  been,  up  to  the  death  of  that  poor  girl  in  the  theatre 
in  New  York.' 

'He  was  engaged  to  her,  was  he  not?' 

'Yes.' 

'I  forget  who  she  was.' 

'His  partner's  daughter.  She  was  called  Ida  Bam- 
berger.' 

'Ida?    Like  the  little  girl?' 

'Yes.  Bamberger  divorced  his  wife,  and  she  married 
Senator  Moon.  Don't  you  see?' 


198  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vni 

'And  the  girls  were  half-sisters  —  and ?'  Logo 

theti  stopped  and  stared. 

'Yes.'  Margaret  nodded  slowly  again  and  poked  the 
fire. 

'Good  heavens!7  The  Greek  knew  something  of  the 
world's  wickedness,  but  his  jaw  dropped.  'GEdipus!' 
he  ejaculated. 

'It  cannot  be  true,'  Margaret  said,  quite  in  earnest. 
'I  detest  him,  but  I  cannot  believe  that  of  him.' 

For  in  her  mind  all  that  she  knew  and  that  Griggs 
had  told  her,  and  that  Logotheti  did  not  know  yet, 
rose  up  in  orderly  logic,  and  joined  what  was  now  in 
her  mind,  completing  the  whole  hideous  tale  of  wicked 
ness  that  had  ended  in  the  death  of  Ida  Bamberger, 
who  had  been  murdered,  perhaps,  in  desperation  to 
avert  a  crime  even  more  monstrous.  The  dying  girl's 
faint  voice  came  back  to  Margaret  across  the  ocean. 

1  He  did  it  - 

And  there  was  the  stain  on  Paul  Griggs'  hand;  and 
there  was  little  Ida's  face  on  the  steamer,  when  she  had 
looked  up  and  had  seen  Van  Torp's  lips  moving,  and 
had  understood  what  he  was  saying  to  himself,  and  had 
dragged  Margaret  away  in  terror.  And  not  least,  there 
was  the  indescribable  fear  of  him  which  Margaret  felt 
when  he  was  near  her  for  a  few  minutes. 

On  the  other  side,  what  was  there  to  be  said  for  him? 
Miss  More,  quiet,  good,  conscientious  Miss  More,  devot 
ing  her  life  to  the  child,  said  that  he  was  one  of  the 
kindest  men  living.  There  was  Lady  Maud,  with  her 
clear  eyes,  her  fearless  ways,  and  her  knowledge  of  the 


CHAP,  vm  THE   PRIMADONNA  199 

world  and  men,  and  she  said  that  Van  Torp  was  kind, 
and  good  to  people  in  trouble  and  true  to  his  friends. 
Lord  Creedmore,  the  intimate  friend  of  Margaret's 
father,  a  barrister  half  his  life,  and  as  keen  as  a  hawk, 
said  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  was  a  very  decent  sort  of  man, 
and  he  evidently  allowed  his  daughter  to  like  the 
American.  It  was  true  that  a  scandalous  tale  about 
Lady  Maud  and  the  millionaire  was  already  going  from 
mouth  to  mouth,  but  Margaret  did  not  believe  it.  If 
she  had  known  that  the  facts  were  accurately  told, 
whatever  their  meaning  might  be,  she  would  have  taken 
them  for  further  evidence  against  the  accused.  As  for 
Miss  More,  she  was  guided  by  her  duty  to  her  employer, 
or  her  affection  for  little  Ida,  and  she  seemed  to  be  of 
the  charitable  sort,  who  think  no  evil;  but  after  what 
Lord  Creedmore  had  said,  Margaret  had  no  doubt  but 
that  it  was  Mr.  Van  Torp  who  provided  for  the  child, 
and  if  she  was  his  daughter,  the  reason  for  Senator 
Moon's  neglect  of  her  was  patent. 

Then  Margaret  thought  of  Isidore  Bamberger,  the 
hard-working  man  of  business  who  was  Van  Torp's 
right  hand  and  figure-head,  as  Griggs  had  said,  and 
who  had  divorced  the  beautiful,  half-crazy  mother  of 
the  two  Idas  because  Van  Torp  had  stolen  her  from 
him  —  Van  Torp,  his  partner,  and  once  his  trusted 
friend.  She  remembered  the  other  things  Griggs  had 
told  her :  how  old  Bamberger  must  surely  have  discovered 
that  his  daughter  had  been  murdered,  and  that  he 
meant  to  keep  it  a  secret  till  he  caught  the  murderer. 
Even  now  the  detectives  might  be  on  the  right  scent, 


200  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  vin 

and  if  he  whose  child  had  been  killed,  and  whose  wife 
had  been  stolen  from  him  by  the  man  he  had  once 
trusted,  learnt  the  whole  truth  at  last,  he  would  not  be 
easily  appeased. 

'You  have  had  some  singular  offers  of  marriage/  said 
Logotheti  in  a  tone  of  reflection.  'You  will  probably 
marry  a  beggar  some  day  —  a  nice  beggar,  who  has 
ruined  himself  like  a  gentleman,  but  a  beggar  never 
theless!' 

'I  don't  know/  Margaret  said  carelessly.  'Of  one 
thing  I  am  sure.  I  shall  not  marry  Mr.  Van  Torp.' 

Logotheti  laughed  softly. 

'Remember  the  French  proverb/  he  said.  "'Say  not 
to  the  fountain,  I  will  not  drink  of  thy  water."' 

'Proverbs/  returned  Margaret,  'are  what  Schreier- 
meyer  calls  stupid  stuff.  Fancy  marrying  that  monster ! ' 

'Yes/  assented  Logotheti,  'fancy!7 


CHAPTER  IX 

THREE  weeks  later,  when  the  days  were  lengthening 
quickly  and  London  was  beginning  to  show  its  better 
side  to  the  cross-grained  people  who  abuse  its  climate, 
the  gas  was  lighted  again  in  the  dingy  rooms  in  Hare 
Court.  No  one  but  the  old  woman  who  came  to  sweep 
had  visited  them  since  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  gone  into  the 
country  in  March,  after  Lady  Maud  had  been  to  see  him 
on  the  evening  of  his  arrival. 

As  then,  the  fire  was  laid  in  the  grate,  but  the  man  in 
black  who  sat  in  the  shabby  arm-chair  had  not  put  a 
match  to  the  shavings,  and  the  bright  copper  kettle  on 
the  movable  hob  shone  coldly  in  the  raw  glare  from  the 
incandescent  gaslight.  The  room  was  chilly,  and  the 
man  had  not  taken  off  his  black  overcoat  or  his  hat, 
which  had  a  broad  band  on  it.  His  black  gloves  lay  on 
the  table  beside  him.  He  wore  patent  leather  boots 
with  black  cloth  tops,  and  he  turned  in  his  toes  as  he  sat. 

His  aquiline  features  were  naturally  of  the  melan 
cholic  type,  and  as  he  stared  at  the  fireplace  his  ex 
pression  was  profoundly  sad.  He  did  not  move  for  a 
long  time,  but  suddenly  he  trembled,  as  a  man  does  who 
feels  the  warning  chill  in  a  malarious  country  when  the 
sun  goes  down,  and  two  large  bright  tears  ran  down  his 
lean  dark  cheeks  and  were  quickly  lost  in  his  grizzled 

201 


202  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  ix 

beard.  Either  he  did  not  feel  them,  or  he  would  not 
take  the  trouble  to  dry  them,  for  he  sat  quite  still  and 
kept  his  eyes  on  the  grate. 

Outside  it  was  quite  dark  and  the  air  was  thick,  so 
that  the  chimney-pots  on  the  opposite  roof  were  hardly 
visible  against  the  gloomy  sky.  It  was  the  time  of  year 
when  spring  seems  very  near  in  broad  daylight,  but  as 
far  away  as  in  January  when  the  sun  goes  down. 

Mr.  Isidore  Bamberger  was  waiting  for  a  visitor,  as 
his  partner  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  waited  in  the  same  place 
a  month  earlier,  but  he  made  no  preparations  for  a 
cheerful  meeting,  and  the  cheap  japanned  tea-caddy, 
with  the  brown  teapot  and  the  chipped  cups  and  saucers, 
stood  undisturbed  in  the  old-fashioned  cupboard  in  the 
corner,  while  the  lonely  man  sat  before  the  cold  fireplace 
and  let  the  tears  trickle  down  his  cheeks  as  they  would. 

At  the  double  stroke  of  the  spring  door-bell,  twice 
repeated,  his  expression  changed  as  if  he  had  been 
waked  from  a  dream.  He  dried  his  cheeks  roughly 
with  the  back  of  his  hand,  and  his  very  heavy  black 
eyebrows  were  drawn  down  and  together,  as  if  the  ten 
sion  of  the  man's  whole  nature  had  been  relaxed  and 
was  now  suddenly  restored.  The  look  of  sadness  hard 
ened  to  an  expression  that  was  melancholy  still,  but 
grim  and  unforgiving,  and  the  grizzled  beard,  clipped 
rather  close  at  the  sides,  betrayed  the  angles  of  the 
strong  jaw  as  he  set  his  teeth  and  rose  to  let  in  his  visitor. 
He  was  round-shouldered  and  slightly  bow-legged  when 
he  stood  up;  he  was  heavily  and  clumsily  built,  but  he 
was  evidently  strong. 


CHAP,  ix  THE   PRIMADONNA  203 

He  went  out  into  the  dark  entry  and  opened  the 
door,  and  a  moment  later  he  came  back  with  Mr.  Feist, 
the  man  with  the  unhealthy  complexion  whom  Mar 
garet  had  seen  at  the  Turkish  Embassy.  Isidore  Barn- 
berger  sat  down  in  the  easy-chair  again  without  cere 
mony,  leaving  his  guest  to  bring  up  a  straight-backed 
chair  for  himself. 

Mr.  Feist  was  evidently  in  a  very  nervous  condition. 
His  hand  shook  perceptibly  as  he  mopped  his  forehead 
after  sitting  down,  and  he  moved  his  chair  uneasily 
twice  because  the  incandescent  light  irritated  his  eyes. 
He  did  not  wait  for  Bamberger  to  question  him,  however. 

'It's  all  right/  he  said,  'but  he  doesn't  care  to  take 
steps  till  after  this  season  is  over.  He  says  the  same 
thing  will  happen  again  to  a  dead  certainty,  and  that 
the  more  evidence  he  has  the  surer  he'll  be  of  the  decree. 
I  think  he's  afraid  Van  Torp  has  some  explanation  up 
his  sleeve  that  will  swing  things  the  other  way.' 

'Didn't  he  catch  her  here?'  asked  the  elder  man, 
evidently  annoyed.  'Didn't  he  find  the  money  on  this 
table  in  an  envelope  addressed  to  her?  Didn't  he  have 
two  witnesses  with  him?  Or  is  all  that  an  invention?' 

'It  happened  just  so.  But  he's  afraid  there's  some 
explanation  - 

'Feist,'  said  Isidore  Bamberger  slowly,  'find  out  what 
explanation  the  man's  afraid  of,  pretty  quick,  or  I'll  get 
somebody  who  will.  It's  my  belief  that  he's  just  a 
common  coward,  who  takes  money  from  his  wife  and 
doesn't  care  how  she  gets  it.  I  suppose  she  refused  to 
pay  one  day,  so  he  strengthened  his  position  by  catching 


204  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  ix 

her;  but  he  doesn't  want  to  divorce  the  goose  that  lays 
the  golden  egg  as  long  as  he's  short  of  cash.  That's 
about  the  measure  of  it,  you  may  depend.' 

'She  may  be  a  goose/  answered  Feist,  'but  she's  a 
wild  one,  and  she'll  lead  us  a  chase  too.  She's  up  to  all 
sorts  of  games,  I've  ascertained.  She  goes  out  of  the 
house  at  all  hours  and  comes  home  when  she's  ready,  and 
it  isn't  to  meet  your  friend  either,  for  he's  not  been  in 
London  again  since  he  landed.' 

'Then  who  else  is  it?'  asked  Bamberger. 

Feist  smiled  in  a  sickly  way. 

'Don't  know,'  he  said.     'Can't  find  out.' 

'I  don't  like  people  who  don't  know  and  can't  find 
out/  answered  the  other.  Tin  in  a  hurry,  I  tell  you. 
I'm  employing  you,  and  paying  you  a  good  salar}^  and 
taking  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  have  you  pushed  with 
letters  of  introduction  where  you  can  see  her,  and  now 
you  come  here  and  tell  me  you  .don't  know  and  you 
can't  find  out.  It  won't  do,  Feist.  You're  no  better 
than  you  used  to  be  when  you  were  my  secretary  last 
year.  You're  a  pretty  bright  young  fellow  when  you 
don't  drink,  but  when  you  do  you're  about  as  useful  as 
a  painted  clock  —  and  even  a  painted  clock  is  right 
twice  in  twenty-four  hours.  It's  more  than  you  are. 
The  only  good  thing  about  you  is  that  you  can  hold 
your  tongue,  drunk  or  sober.  I  admit  that.' 

Having  relieved  himself  of  this  plain  opinion  Isidore 
Bamberger  waited  to  hear  what  Feist  had  to  say,  keep 
ing  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  unhealthy  face. 

'I've  not  been  drinking  lately,  anyhow/  he  answered, 


CHAP,  ix  THE   PRIMADONNA  205 

'and  I'll  tell  you  one  thing,  Mr.  Bamberger,  and  that 
is,  that  I'm  just  as  anxious  as  you  can  be  to  see  this 
thing  through,  every  bit.' 

'Well,  then,  don't  waste  time!  I  don't  care  a  cent 
about  the  divorce,  except  that  it  will  bring  the  whole 
affair  into  publicity.  At  soon  as  all  the  papers  are  down 
on  him,  I'll  start  in  on  the  real  thing.  I  shall  be  ready 
by  that  time.  I  want  public  opinion  on  both  sides  of 
the  ocean  to  run  strong  against  him,  as  it  ought  to,  and 
it's  just  that  it  should.  If  I  don't  manage  that,  he  may 
get  off  in  the  end  in  spite  of  your  evidence.' 

'Look  here,  Mr.  Bamberger,'  said  Feist,  waking  up, 
'if  you  want  my  evidence,  don't  talk  of  dropping  me 
as  you  did  just  now,  or  you  won't  get  it,  do  you  under 
stand?  You've  paid  me  the  compliment  of  telling  me 
that  I  can  hold  my  tongue.  All  right.  But  it  won't 
suit  you  if  I  hold  my  tongue  in  the  witness-box,  will  it? 
That's  all,  Mr.  Bamberger.  I've  nothing  more  to  say 
about  that.' 

There  was  a  sudden  vehemence  in  the  young  man's 
tone  which  portrayed  that  in  spite  of  his  broken  nerves 
he  could  still  be  violent.  But  Isidore  Bamberger  was 
not  the  man  to  be  brow-beaten  by  any  one  he  employed. 
He  almost  smiled  when  Feist  stopped  speaking. 

'That's  all  right,'  he  said  half  good-naturedly  and 
half  contemptuously.  'We  understand  each  other. 
That's  all  right.' 

'I  hope  it  is,'  Feist  answered  in  a  dogged  way.  'I 
only  wanted  you  to  know.' 

'Well,  I  do,  since  you've  told  me.     But  you  needn't 


206  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  IX 

get  excited  like  that.  It's  just  as  well  you  gave  up 
studying  medicine  and  took  to  business,  Feist,  for  you 
haven't  got  what  they  call  a  pleasant  bedside  manner/ 

Mr.  Feist  had  once  been  a  medical  student,  but  had 
given  up  the  profession  on  inheriting  a  sum  of  money 
with  which  he  at  once  began  to  speculate.  After  vari 
ous  vicissitudes  he  had  become  Mr.  Bamberger's  private 
secretary,  and  had  held  that  position  some  time  in  spite 
of  his  one  failing,  because  he  had  certain  qualities  which 
made  him  invaluable  to  his  employer  until  his  nerves 
began  to  give  away.  One  of  those  qualities  was  un 
doubtedly  his  power  of  holding  his  tongue  even  when 
under  the  influence  of  drink;  another  was  his  really 
extraordinary  memory  for  details,  and  especially  for 
letters  he  had  written  under  dictation,  and  for  conver 
sations  he  had  heard.  He  was  skilful,  too,  in  many 
ways  when  in  full  possession  of  his  faculties;  but  though 
Isidore  Bamberger  used  him,  he  despised  him  profoundly, 
as  he  despised  every  man  who  preferred  present  indul 
gence  to  future  profit. 

Feist  lit  a  cigarette  and  blew  a  vast  cloud  of  smoke 
round  him,  but  made  no  answer  to  his  employer's  last 
observation. 

'Now  this  is  what  I  want  you  to  do,'  said  the  latter. 
'Go  to  this  Count  Leven  and  tell  him  it's  a  cash  trans 
action  or  nothing,  and  that  he  runs  no  risk.  Find  out 
what  he'll  really  take,  but  don't  come  talking  to  me 
about  five  thousand  pounds  or  anything  of  that  kind, 
for  that's  ridiculous.  Tell  him  that  if  proceedings  are 
not  begun  by  the  first  of  May  his  wife  won't  get  any 


CHAP.  IX  THE   PRIMADONNA  207 

more  money  from  Van  Torp,  and  he  won't  get  any  more 
from  his  wife.  Use  any  other  argument  that  strikes 
you.  That's  your  business,  because  that's  what  I  pay 
you  for.  What  I  want  is  the  result,  and  that's  justice 
and  no  more,  and  I  don't  care  anything  about  the  means. 
Find  them  and  I'll  pay.  If  you  can't  find  them  I'll 
pay  somebody  who  can,  and  if  nobody  can  I'll  go  to  the 
end  without.  Do  you  under  stand  ?' 

'Oh,  I  understand  right  enough/  answered  Feist, 
with  his  bad  smile.  'If  I  can  hit  on  the  right  scheme  I 
won't  ask  you  anything  extra  for  it,  Mr.  Bamberger! 
By  the  bye,  I  wrote  you  I  met  Cordova,  the  Primadonna, 
at  the  Turkish  Embassy,  didn't  I?  She  hates  him  as 
much  as  the  other  woman  likes  him,  yet  she  and  the 
other  have  struck  up  a  friendship.  I  daresay  I  shall  get 
something  out  of  that  too.' 

'Why  does  Cordova  hate  him?'  asked  Bamberger. 

'Don't  quite  know.     Thought  perhaps  you  might.' 

'No.' 

'He  was  attentive  to  her  last  winter/  Feist  said. 
'That's  all  I  know  for  certain.  He's  a  brutal  sort  of 
man,  and  maybe  he  offended  her  somehow.' 

'Well/  returned  Isidore  Bamberger,  'maybe;  but 
singers  aren't  often  offended  by  men  who  have  money. 
At  least,  I've  always  understood  so,  though  I  don't 
know  much  about  that  side  of  life  myself.' 

'It  would  be  just  one  thing  more  to  break  his  char 
acter  if  Cordova  would  say  something  against  him/ 
suggested  Feist.  'Her  popularity  is  something  tre 
mendous,  and  people  always  believe  a  woman  who  says 


208  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  ix 

that  a  man  has  insulted  her.  In  those  things  the  bare 
word  of  a  pretty  lady  who's  no  better  than  she  should 
be  is  worth  more  than  an  honest  man's  character  for 
thirty  years.' 

'  That's  so/  said  Bamberger,  looking  at  him  atten 
tively.  'That's  quite  true.  Whatever  you  are,  Feist, 
you're  no  fool.  We  may  as  well  have  the  pretty  lady's 
bare  word,  anyway.' 

'If  you  approve,  I'm  nearly  sure  I  can  get  it/  Feist 
answered.  'At  least,  I  can  get  a  statement  which  she 
won't  deny  if  it's  published  in  the  right  way.  I  can 
furnish  the  materials  for  an  article  on  her  that's  sure  to 
please  her  —  born  \&dy,  never  a  word  against  her,  highly 
connected,  unassailable  private  life,  such  a  contrast  to 
several  other  celebrities  on  the  stage,  immensely  chari 
table,  half  American,  half  English  —  every  bit  of  that 
all  helps,  you  see  —  and  then  an  anecdote  or  two  thrown 
in,  and  just  the  bare  facts  about  her  having  had  to  escape 
in  a  hurry  from  a  prominent  millionaire  in  a  New  York 
hotel  —  fairly  ran  for  her  life  and  turned  the  key  against 
him.  Give  his  name  if  you  like.  If  he  brings  action 
for  libel,  you  can  subpoena  Cordova  herself.  She'll 
swear  to  it  if  it's  true,  and  then  you  can  unmask  your 
big  guns  and  let  him  have  it  hot.' 

'  No  doubt,  no  doubt.  But  how  do  you  propose  to  find 
out  if  it  is  true?' 

'Well,  I'll  see;  but  it  will  answer  almost  as  well  if  it's 
not  true/  said  Feist  cynically.  'People  always  believe 
those  things.' 

'It's  only  a  detail/  said  Bamberger,  'but  it's  worth 


CHAP.  IX  THE   PRIMADONNA  209 

something,  and  if  we  can  make  this  man  Leven  begin 
a  suit  against  his  wife,  everything  that's  against  Van 
Torp  will  be  against  her  too.  That's  not  justice,  Feist, 
but  it's  fact.  A  woman  gets  considerably  less  pity  for 
making  mistakes  with  a  blackguard  than  for  liking  an 
honest  man  too  much,  Feist.' 

Mr.  Bamberger,  who  had  divorced  his  own  wife,  de 
livered  these  opinions  thoughtfully,  and,  though  she 
had  made  no  defence,  he  might  be  supposed  to  know 
what  he  was  talking  about. 

Presently  he  dismissed  his  visitor  with  final  injunc 
tions  to  lose  no  time,  and  to  '  find  out '  if  Lady  Maud  was 
interested  in  any  one  besides  Van  Torp,  and  if  not,  what 
was  at  the  root  of  her  eccentric  hours. 

Mr.  Feist  went  away,  apparently  prepared  to  obey 
his  employer  with  all  the  energy  he  possessed.  He  went 
down  the  dimly-lighted  stairs  quickly,  but  he  glanced 
nervously  upwards,  as  if  he  fancied  that  Isidore  Bam 
berger  might  have  silently  opened  the  door  again  to 
look  over  the  banister  and  watch  him  from  above.  In 
the  dark  entry  below  he  paused  a  moment,  and  took  a 
satisfactory  pull  at  a  stout  flask  before  going  out  into 
the  yellowish  gloom  that  had  settled  on  Hare  Court. 

When  he  was  in  the  narrow  alley  he  stopped  again 
and  laughed,  without  making  any  sound,  so  heartily 
that  he  had  to  stand  still  till  the  fit  passed;  and  the 
expression  of  his  unhealthy  face  just  then  would  have 
disturbed  even  Mr.  Bamberger,  who  knew  him  well. 

But  Mr.  Bamberger  was  sitting  in  the  easy-chair  before 
the  fireplace,  and  his  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  bright  point 


210  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  ix 

at  which  the  shiny  copper  kettle  reflected  the  gaslight. 
His  head  had  fallen  slightly  forward,  so  that  his  bearded 
chin  was  out  of  sight  below  the  collar  of  his  overcoat, 
leaving  his  eagle  nose  and  piercing  eyes  above  it.  He  was 
like  a  bird  of  prey  looking  down  over  the  edge  of  its  nest. 
He  had  not  taken  off  his  hat  for  Mr.  Feist,  and  it  was 
pushed  back  from  his  bony  forehead  now,  giving  his 
face  a  look  that  would  have  been  half  comic  if  it  had 
not  been  almost  terrifying:  a  tall  hat  set  on  a  skull,  a 
little  back  or  on  one  side,  produces  just  such  an  effect. 

There  was  no  moisture  in  the  keen  eyes  now.  In  the 
bright  spot  on  the  copper  kettle  they  saw  the  vision  of 
the  end  towards  which  he  was  striving  with  all  his 
strength,  and  all  his  heart,  and  all  his  wealth.  It  was 
a  grim  little  picture,  and  the  chief  figure  in  it  was  a 
thick-set  man  who  had  a  queer  cap  drawn  down  over 
his  face  and  his  hands  tied ;  and  the  eyes  that  saw  it  were 
sure  that  under  the  cap  there  were  the  stony  features  of  a 
man  who  had  stolen  his  friend's  wife  and  killed  his  friend's 
daughter,  and  was  going  to  die  for  what  he  had  done. 

Then  Isidore  Bamberger's  right  hand  disappeared  inside 
the  breast  of  his  coat  and  closed  lovingly  upon  a  full 
pocket-book;  but  there  was  only  a  little  money  in  it,  only  a 
few  banknotes  folded  flat  against  a  thick  package  of  sheets 
of  notepaper  all  covered  with  clear,  close  writing,  some  in 
ink  and  some  in  pencil;  and  if  what  was  written  there  was 
all  true,  it  was  enough  to  hang  Mr.  Rufus  Van  Torp. 

There  were  other  matters,  too,  not  written  there,  but 
carefully  entered  in  the  memory  of  the  injured  man. 
There  was  the  story  of  his  marriage  with  a  beautiful, 


CHAP.  IX  THE   PRIMADONNA  211 

penniless  girl,  not  of  his  own  faith,  whom  he  had  taken 
in  the  face  of  strong  opposition  from  his  family.  She 
had  been  an  exquisite  creature,  fair  and  ethereal,  as 
degenerates  sometimes  are;  she  had  cynically  married 
him  for  his  money,  deceiving  him  easily  enough,  for  he 
was  willing  to  be  blinded;  but  differences  had  soon  arisen 
between  them,  and  had  turned  to  open  quarrelling,  and 
Mr.  Van  Torp  had  taken  it  upon  himself  to  defend  her 
and  to  reconcile  them,  using  the  unlimited  power  his 
position  gave  him  over  his  partner  to  force  the  latter 
to  submit  to  his  wife's  temper  and  caprice,  as  the  only 
alternative  to  ruin.  Her  friendship  for  Van  Torp  grew 
stronger,  till  they  spent  many  hours  of  every  day  to 
gether,  while  her  husband  saw  little  of  her,  though  he 
was  never  altogether  estranged  from  her  so  long  as  they 
lived  under  one  roof. 

But  the  time  came  at  last  when  Bamberger  had  power 
too,  and  Van  Torp  could  no  longer  hold  him  in  check 
with  a  threat  that  had  become  vain;  for  he  was  more 
than  indispensable,  he  was  a  part  of  the  Nickel  Trust, 
he  was  the  figure-head  of  the  ship,  and  could  not  be 
discarded  at  will,  to  be  replaced  by  another. 

As  soon  as  he  was  sure  of  this  and  felt  free  to  act, 
Isidore  Bamberger  divorced  his  wife,  in  a  State  where 
slight  grounds  are  sufficient.  For  the  sake  of  the  Nickel 
Trust  Van  Torp's  name  was  not  mentioned.  Mrs.  Bam 
berger  made  no  defence,  the  affair  was  settled  almost 
privately,  and  Bamberger  was  convinced  that  she  would 
soon  marry  Van  Torp.  Instead,  six  weeks  had  not 
passed  before  she  married  Senator  Moon,  a  man  whom 


212  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  ix 

her  husband  had  supposed  she  scarcely  knew,  and  to 
Bamberger's  amazement  Van  Torp's  temper  was  not 
at  all  disturbed  by  the  marriage.  He  acted  as  if  he  had 
expected  it,  and  though  he  hardly  ever  saw  her  after 
that  time,  he  exchanged  letters  with  her  during  nearly 
two  years. 

Bamberger's  little  daughter  Ida  had  never  been  happy 
with  her  beautiful  mother,  who  had  alternately  spoilt 
her  and  vented  her  temper  on  her,  according  to  the 
caprice  of  the  moment.  At  the  time  of  the  divorce 
the  child  had  been  only  ten  years  old ;  and  as  Bamberger 
was  very  kind  to  her  and  was  of  an  even  disposition, 
though  never  very  cheerful,  she  had  grown  up  to  be 
extremely  fond  of  him.  She  never  guessed  that  he  did 
not  love  her  in  return,  for  though  he  was  cynical  enough 
in  matters  of  business,  he  was  just  according  to  his 
lights,  and  he  would  not  let  her  know  that  everything 
about  her  recalled  her  mother,  from  her  hair  to  her  tone 
of  voice,  her  growing  caprices,  and  her  silly  fits  of  temper. 
He  could  not  believe  in  the  affection  of  a  daughter  who 
constantly  reminded  him  of  the  hell  in  which  he  had 
lived  for  years.  If  what  Van  Torp  told  Lady  Maud  of 
his  own  pretended  engagement  to  Ida  was  true,  it  was 
explicable  only  on  that  ground,  so  far  as  her  father  was 
concerned.  Bamberger  felt  no  affection  for  his  daughter, 
and  saw  no  reason  why  she  should  not  be  used  as  an 
instrument,  with  her  own  consent,  for  consolidating  the 
position  of  the  Nickel  Trust. 

As  for  the  former  Mrs.  Bamberger,  afterwards  Mrs. 
Moon,  she  had  gone  to  Europe  in  the  autumn,  not  many 


CHAP.  IX  THE   PRIMADONNA  213 

months  after  her  marriage,  leaving  the  Senator  in  Wash 
ington,  and  had  returned  after  nearly  a  year's  absence, 
bringing  her  husband  a  fine  little  girl,  whom  she  had 
christened  Ida,  like  her  first  child,  without  consulting 
him.  It  soon  became  apparent  that  the  baby  was 
totally  deaf;  and  not  very  long  after  this  discovery, 
Mrs.  Moon  began  to  show  signs  of  not  being  quite  sane. 
Three  years  later  she  was  altogether  out  of  her  mind, 
and  as  soon  as  this  was  clear  the  child  was  sent  to  the 
East  to  be  taught.  The  rest  has  already  been  told. 
Bamberger,  of  course,  had  never  seen  little  Ida,  and  had 
perhaps  never  heard  of  her  existence,  and  Senator  Moon 
did  not  see  her  again  before  he  died. 

Bamberger  had  not  loved  his  own  daughter  in  her 
life,  but  since  her  tragic  death  she  had  grown  dear  to 
him  in  memory,  and  he  reproached  himself  unjustly 
with  having  been  cold  and  unkind  to  her.  Below  the 
surface  of  his  money-loving  nature  there  was  still  the 
deep  and  unsatisfied  sentiment  to  which  his  wife  had 
first  appealed,  and  by  playing  on  which  she  had  deceived 
him  into  marrying  her.  Her  treatment  of  him.  had  not 
killed  it,  and  the  memory  of  his  fair  young  daughter 
now  stirred  it  again.  He  accused  himself  of  having 
misunderstood  her.  What  had  been  unreal  and  super 
ficial  in  her  mother  had  perhaps  been  true  and  deep  in 
her.  He  knew  that  she  had  loved  him;  he  knew  it  now, 
and  it  was  the  recollection  of  that  one  being  who  had 
been  devoted  to  him  for  himself,  since  he  had  been  a 
grown  man,  that  sometimes  brought  the  tears  from  his 
eyes  when  he  was  alone.  It  would  have  been  a  com- 


214  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  IX 

fort,  now,  to  have  loved  her  in  return  while  she  lived, 
and  to  have  trusted  in  her  love  then,  instead  of  having 
been  tormented  by  the  belief  that  she  was  as  false  as  her 
mother  had  been. 

But  he  had  been  disappointed  of  his  heart's  desire; 
for,  strange  as  it  may  seem  to  those  who  have  not  known 
such  men  as  Isidore  Bamberger,  his  nature  was  pro 
foundly  domestic,  and  the  ideal  of  his  youth  had  been 
to  grow  old  in  his  own  home,  with  a  loving  wife  at  his 
side,  surrounded  by  children  and  grandchildren  who 
loved  both  himself  and  her.  Next  to  that,  he  had 
desired  wealth  and  the  power  money  gives;  but  that  had 
been  first,  until  the  hope  of  it  was  gone.  Looking  back 
now,  he  was  sure  that  it  had  all  been  destroyed  from 
root  to  branch,  the  hope  and  the  possibility,  and  even 
the  memory  that  might  have  still  comforted  him,  by 
Rufus  Van  Torp,  upon  whom  he  prayed  that  he  might 
live  to  be  revenged.  He  sought  no  secret  vengeance, 
either,  no  pitfall  of  ruin  dug  in  the  dark  for  the  man's 
untimely  destruction;  all  was  to  be  in  broad  daylight, 
by  the  evidence  of  facts,  under  the  verdict  of  justice, 
and  at  the  hands  of  the  law  itself. 

It  had  not  been  very  hard  to  get  what  he  needed,  for 
his  former  secretary,  Mr.  Feist,  had  worked  with  as 
much  industry  and  intelligence  as  if  the  case  had  been 
his  own,  and  in  spite  of  the  vice  that  was  killing  him 
had  shown  a  wonderful  power  of  holding  his  tongue.  It 
is  quite  certain  that  up  to  the  day  when  Feist  called 
on  his  employer  in  Hare  Court,  Mr.  Van  Torp  believed 
himself  perfectly  safe. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  FORTNIGHT  later  Count  Leven  informed  his  wife 
that  he  was  going  home  on  a  short  leave,  but  that  she 
might  stay  in  London  if  she  pleased.  An  aunt  of  his 
had  died  in  Warsaw,  he  said,  leaving  him  a  small  property, 
and  in  spite  of  the  disturbed  state  of  his  own  country 
it  was  necessary  that  he  should  go  and  take  possession 
of  the  land  without  delay. 

Lady  Maud  did  not  believe  a  word  of  what  he  said, 
until  it  became  apparent  that  he  had  the  cash  necessary 
for  his  journey  without  borrowing  of  her,  as  he  fre 
quently  tried  to  do,  with  varying  success.  She  smiled 
calmly  as  she  bade  him  good-bye  and  wished  him  a 
pleasant  journey;  he  made  a  magnificent  show  of  kiss 
ing  her  hand  at  parting,  and  waved  his  hat  to  the 
window  when  he  was  outside  the  house,  before  getting 
into  the  four-wheeler,  on  the  roof  of  which  his  volu 
minous  luggage  made  a  rather  unsafe  pyramid.  She 
was  not  at  the  window,  and  he  knew  it;  but  other 
people  might  be  watching  him  from  theirs,  and  the  ser 
vant  stood  at  the  open  door.  It  was  always  worth 
while,  in  Count  Leven's  opinion,  to  make  an  ' effect'  if 
one  got  a  chance. 

Three  days  later  Lady  Maud  received  a  document 
from  the  Russian  Embassy  informing  her  that  her 

215 


216  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  x 

husband  had  brought  an  action  to  obtain  a  divorce 
from  her  in  the  Ecclesiastical  Court  of  the  Patriarch  of 
Constantinople,  on  the  ground  of  her  undue  intimacy  with 
Rufus  Van  Torp  of  New  York,  as  proved  by  the  attested 
depositions  of  detectives.  She  was  further  informed  that 
unless  she  appeared  in  person  or  by  proxy  before  the 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople  within  one  month  of  the  date 
of  the  present  notice,  to  defend  herself  against  the  charges 
made  by  her  husband,  judgment  would  go  by  default, 
and  the  divorce  would  be  pronounced. 

At  first  Lady  Maud  imagined  this  extraordinary 
document  to  be  a  stupid  practical  joke,  invented  by 
some  half-fledged  cousin  to  tease  her.  She  had  a  good 
many  cousins,  among  whom  were  several  beardless 
undergraduates  and  callow  subalterns  in  smart  regi 
ments,  who  would  think  it  no  end  of  fun  to  scare  '  Cousin 
Maud.'  There  was  no  mistaking  the  official  paper  on 
which  the  document  was  written,  and  it  bore  the  seal 
of  the  Chancery  of  the  Russian  Embassy;  but  in  Lady 
Maud's  opinion  the  mention  of  the  Patriarch  of  Con 
stantinople  stamped  it  as  an  egregious  hoax. 

On  reflection,  however,  she  decided  that  it  must  have 
been  perpetrated  by  some  one  in  the  Embassy  for  the 
express  purpose  of  annoying  her,  since  no  outsider 
could  have  got  at  the  seal,  even  if  he  could  have  ob 
tained  possession  of  the  paper  and  envelope.  As  soon 
as  this  view  presented  itself,  she  determined  to  ascertain 
the  truth  directly,  and  to  bring  down  the  ambassadorial 
wrath  on  the  offender. 

Accordingly  she  took  the  paper  to  the  Russian  clerk 


CHAP,  x  THE   PRIMADONNA  217 

who  was  in  charge  of  the  Chancery,  and  inquired  who 
had  dared  to  concoct  such  a  paper  and  to  send  it 
to  her. 

To  her  stupefaction,  the  man  smiled  politely  and  in 
formed  her  that  the  document  was  genuine.  What  had 
the  Patriarch  to  do  with  it?  That  was  very  simple. 
Had  she  not  been  married  to  a  Russian  subject  by  the 
Greek  rite  in  Paris?  Certainly.  Very  well.  All  mar 
riages  of  Russian  subjects  out  of  their  own  country 
took  place  under  the  authority  of  the  Patriarch  of  Con 
stantinople,  and  all  suits  for  divorcing  persons  thus 
married  came  under  his  jurisdiction.  That  was  all. 
It  was  such  a  simple  matter  that  every  Russian  knew 
all  about  it.  The  clerk  asked  if  he  could  be  of  service 
to  her.  He  had  been  stationed  in  Constantinople,  and 
knew  just  what  to  do;  and,  moreover,  he  had  a  friend 
at  the  Chancery  there,  who  would  take  charge  of  the 
case  if  the  Countess  desired  it. 

Lady  Maud  thanked  him  coldly,  replaced  the  docu 
ment  in  its  envelope,  and  left  the  Embassy  with  the 
intention  of  never  setting  foot  in  it  again. 

She  understood  why  Leven  had  suddenly  lost  an  aunt 
of  whom  she  had  never  heard,  and  had  got  out  of  the 
way  on  pretence  of  an  imaginary  inheritance.  The 
dates  showed  plainly  that  the  move  had  been  prepared 
before  he  left,  and  that  he  had  started  when  the  notice  of 
the  suit  was  about  to  be  sent  to  her.  The  only  explana 
tion  that  occurred  to  her  was  that  her  husband  had  found 
some  very  rich  woman  who  was  willing  to  marry  him  if 
he  could  free  himself;  and  this  seemed  likely  enough. 


218  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  x 

She  hesitated  as  to  how  she  should  act.  Her  first 
impulse  was  to  go  to  her  father,  who  was  a  lawyer  and 
would  give  her  good  advice,  but  a  moment's  thought 
showed  her  that  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  go  to  him. 
Being  no  longer  immobilised  by  a  sprained  ankle,  Lord 
Creedmore  would  probably  leave  England  instantly  in 
pursuit  of  Leven  himself,  and  no  one  could  tell  what 
the  consequences  might  be  if  he  caught  him;  they  would 
certainly  be  violent,  and  they  might  be  disastrous. 

Then  Lady  Maud  thought  of  telegraphing  to  Mr.  Van 
Torp  to  come  to  town  to  see  her  about  an  urgent  matter; 
but  she  decided  against  that  course  too.  Whatever  her 
relations  were  with  the  American  financier  this  was  not 
the  moment  to  call  attention  to  them.  She  would  write 
to  him,  and  in  order  to  see  him  conveniently  she  would 
suggest  to  her  father  to  have  a  week-end  house  party 
in  the  country,  and  to  ask  his  neighbour  over  from 
Oxley  Paddox.  Nobody  but  Mr.  Van  Torp  and  the 
post-office  called  the  place  Torp  Towers. 

She  had  taken  a  hansom  to  the  Embassy,  but  she 
walked  back  to  Charles  Street  because  she  was  angry, 
and  she  considered  nothing  so  good  for  a  rage  as  a  stiff 
walk.  By  the  time  she  reached  her  own  door  she  was 
as  cool  as  ever,  and  her  clear  eyes  looked  upon  the 
wicked  world  with  their  accustomed  calm. 

As  she  laid  her  hand  on  the  door-bell,  a  smart 
brougham  drove  up  quickly  and  stopped  close  to  the 
pavement,  and  as  she  turned  her  head  Margaret  was 
letting  herself  out,  before  the  footman  could  get  round 
from  the  other  side  to  open  the  door  of  the  carriage. 


CHAP,  x  THE   PRIMADONNA  219 

'May  I  come  in?'  asked  the  singer  anxiously,  and 
Lady  Maud  saw  that  she  seemed  much  disturbed,  and 
had  a  newspaper  in  her  hand.  'I'm  so  glad  I  just 
caught  you,'  Margaret  added,  as  the  door  opened. 

They  went  in  together.  The  house  was  very  small 
and  narrow,  and  Lady  Maud  led  the  way  into  a  little 
sitting-room  on  the  right  of  the  hall,  and  shut  the  door. 

'Is  it  true?'  Margaret  asked  as  soon  as  they  were 
alone. 

'What?' 

'About  your  divorce ' 

Lady  Maud  smiled  rather  contemptuously. 

'Is  it  already  in  the  papers?'  she  asked,  glancing  at 
the  one  Margaret  had  brought.  'I  only  heard  of  it  my 
self  an  hour  ago!' 

'Then  it's  really  true!  There's  a  horrid  article  about 
it ' 

Margaret  was  evidently  much  more  disturbed  than 
her  friend,  who  sat  down  in  a  careless  attitude  and 
smiled  at  her. 

'It  had  to  come  some  day.  And  besides,'  added 
Lady  Maud,  'I  don't  care!' 

'There's  something  about  me  too,'  answered  Mar 
garet,  'and  I  cannot  help  caring.' 

'About  you?' 

'Me  and  Mr.  Van  Torp  —  the  article  is  written  by 
some  one  who  hates  him  —  that's  clear !  —  and  you 
know  I  don't  like  him;  but  that's  no  reason  why  I  should 
be  dragged  in.' 

She  was  rather  incoherent,  and  Lady  Maud  took  the 


220  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  x 

paper  from  her  hand  quietly,  and  found  the  article  at 
once.  It  was  as  'horrid'  as  the  Primadonna  said  it  was. 
No  names  were  given  in  full,  but  there  could  not  be  the 
slightest  mistake  about  the  persons  referred  to,  who 
were  all  clearly  labelled  by  bits  of  characteristic  descrip 
tion.  It  was  all  in  the  ponderously  airy  form  of  one  of 
those  more  or  less  true  stories  of  which  some  modern 
weeklies  seem  to  have  an  inexhaustible  supply,  but  it 
was  a  particularly  vicious  specimen  of  its  class  so  far  as 
Mr.  Van  Torp  was  concerned.  His  life  was  torn  up  by 
the  roots  and  mercilessly  pulled  to  pieces,  and  he  was 
shown  to  the  public  as  a  Leicester  Square  Lovelace  or  a 
Bowery  Don  Juan.  His  baleful  career  was  traced  from 
his  supposed  affair  with  Mrs.  Isidore  Bamberger  and 
her  divorce  to  the  scene  at  Margaret's  hotel  in  New 
York,  and  from  that  to  the  occasion  of  his  being  caught 
with  Lady  Maud  in  Hare  Court  by  a  justly  angry  hus 
band;  and  there  was,  moreover,  a  pretty  plain  allusion 
to  little  Ida  Moon. 

Lady  Maud  read  the  article  quickly,  but  without 
betraying  any  emotion.  When  she  had  finished  she 
raised  her  eyebrows  a  very  little,  and  gave  the  paper 
back  to  Margaret. 

'It  is  rather  nasty/  she  observed  quietly,  as  if  she 
were  speaking  of  the  weather. 

'It's  utterly  disgusting/  Margaret  answered  with 
emphasis.  'What  shall  you  do?' 

'I  really  don't  know.  Why  should  I  do  anything? 
Your  position  is  different,  for  you  can  write  to  the  papers 
and  deny  all  that  concerns  you  if  you  like  —  though  I'm 


CHAP.  X  THE  PRIMADONNA  221 

sure  I  don't  know  why  you  should  care.  It's  not  to 
your  discredit.7 

'I  could  not  very  well  deny  it/  said  the  Primadonna 
thoughtfully.  Almost  before  the  words  had  left  her 
lips  she  was  sorry  she  had  spoken. 

'Does  it  happen  to  be  true?'  asked  Lady  Maud,  with 
an  encouraging  smile. 

'Well,  since  you  ask  me  —  yes.'  Margaret  felt  un 
comfortable. 

'Oh,  I  thought  it  might  be,'  answered  Lady  Maud. 
'With  all  his  good  qualities  he  has  a  very  rough  side. 
The  story  about  me  is  perfectly  true  too/ 

Margaret  was  amazed  at  her  friend's  quiet  cynicism. 

'Not  that  about  the  —  the  envelope  on  the  table ' 

She  stopped  short. 

'Oh  yes!  There  were  four  thousand  one  hundred 
pounds  in  it.  My  husband  counted  the  notes.' 

The  singer  leaned  back  in  her  chair  and  stared  in  un 
concealed  surprise,  wondering  how  in  the  world  she 
could  have  been  so  completely  mistaken  in  her  judg 
ment  of  a  friend  who  had  seemed  to  her  the  best  type 
of  an  honest  and  fearless  Englishwoman.  Margaret 
Donne  had  not  been  brought  up  hi  the  gay  world;  she 
had,  however,  seen  some  aspects  of  it  since  she  had  been 
a  successful  singer,  and  she  did  not  exaggerate  its  vir 
tues;  but  somehow  Lady  Maud  had  seemed  to  be  above 
it,  while  living  in  it,  and  Margaret  would  have  put  her 
hand  into  the  fire  for  the  daughter  of  her  father's  old 
friend,  who  now  acknowledged  without  a  blush  that  she 
had  taken  four  thousand  pounds  from  Rufus  Van  Torp. 


222  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  x 

'I  suppose  it  would  go  against  me  even  in  an  English 
court/  said  Lady  Maud  in  a  tone  of  reflection.  'It  looks 
so  badly  to  take  money,  you  know,  doesn't  it?  But  if 
I  must  be  divorced,  it  really  strikes  me  as  delightfully 
original  to  have  it  done  by  the  Patriarch  of  Constanti 
nople!  Doesn't  it,  my  dear?' 

'It's  not  usual,  certainly/  said  Margaret  gravely. 

She  was  puzzled  by  the  other's  attitude,  and  some 
what  horrified. 

'I  suppose  you  think  I'm  a  very  odd  sort  of  person/ 
said  Lady  Maud,  'because  I  don't  mind  so  much  as 
most  women  might.  You  see,  I  never  really  cared  for 
Leven,  though  if  I  had  not  thought  I  had  a  fancy  for 
him  I  wouldn't  have  married  him.  My  people  were 
quite  against  it.  The  truth  is,  I  couldn't  have  the 
husband  I  wanted,  and  as  I  did  not  mean  to  break  my 
heart  about  it,  I  married,  as  so  many  girls  do.  That's 
my  little  story!  It's  not  long,  is  it?' 

She  laughed,  but  she  very  rarely  did  that,  even  when 
she  was  amused,  and  now  Margaret's  quick  ear  detected 
here  and  there  in  the  sweet  ripple  a  note  that  did  not 
ring  quite  like  the  rest.  The  intonation  was  not  false 
or  artificial,  but  only  sad  and  regretful,  as  genuine 
laughter  should  not  be.  Margaret  looked  at  her,  still 
profoundly  mystified,  and  still  drawn  to  her  by  natural 
sympathy,  though  horrified  almost  to  disgust  at  what 
seemed  her  brutal  cynicism. 

'May  I  ask  one  question?  We've  grown  to  be  such 
good  friends  that  perhaps  you  won't  mind/ 

Lady  Maud  nodded. 


CHAP.  X  THE   PRIMADONNA  223 

'Of  course/  she  said.  ' Ask  me  anything  you  please. 
I'll  answer  if  I  can.' 

'You  said  that  you  could  not  marry  the  man  you 
liked.  Was  he  —  Mr.  Van  Torp?' 

Lady  Maud  was  not  prepared  for  the  question. 

'Mr.  Van  Torp?'  she  repeated  slowly.  'Oh  dear  no! 
Certainly  not!  What  an  extraordinary  idea!'  She 
gazed  into  Margaret's  eyes  with  a  look  of  inquiry,  until 
the  truth  suddenly  dawned  upon  her.  'Oh,  I  see!'  she 
cried.  'How  awfully  funny!' 

There  was  no  minor  note  of  sadness  or  regret  in  her 
rippling  laughter  now.  It  was  so  exquisitely  true  and 
musical  that  the  great  soprano  listened  to  it  with  keen 
delight,  and  wondered  whether  she  herself  could  pro 
duce  a  sound  half  so  delicious. 

'No,  my  dear,'  said  Lady  Maud,  as  her  mirth  sub 
sided.  'I  never  was  in  love  with  Mr.  Van  Torp.  But 
it  really  is  awfully  funny  that  you  should  have  thought 
so!  No  wonder  you  looked  grave  when  I  told  you  that 
I  was  really  found  in  his  rooms!  We  are  the  greatest 
friends,  and  no  man  was  ever  kinder  to  a  woman  than 
he  has  been  to  me  for  the  last  two  years.  But  that's  all. 
Did  you  really  think  the  money  was  meant  for  me? 
That  wasn't  quite  nice  of  you,  was  it?' 

The  bright  smile  was  still  on  her  face  as  she  spoke 
the  last  words,  for  her  nature  was  far  too  big  to  be  really 
hurt;  but  the  little  rebuke  went  home  sharply,  and 
Margaret  felt  unreasonably  ashamed  of  herself,  con 
sidering  that  Lady  Maud  had  not  taken  the  slightest 
pains  to  explain  the  truth  to  her. 


224  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  x 

'I'm  so  sorry/  she  said  contritely.  'I'm  dreadfully 
sorry.  It  was  abominably  stupid  of  me!' 

'Oh  no.  It  was  quite  natural.  This  is  not  a  pretty 
world,  and  there's  no  reason  why  you  should  think  me 
better  than  lots  of  other  women.  And  besides,  I  don't 
care ! ' 

'But  surely  you  won't  let  your  husband  get  a  divorce 
for  such  a  reason  as  that  without  making  a  defence?' 

'Before  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople?'  Lady 
Maud  evidently  thought  the  idea  very  amusing.  'It 
sounds  like  a  comic  opera,'  she  added.  'Why  should 
I  defend  myself?  I  shall  be  glad  to  be  free;  and  as  for 
the  story,  the  people  who  like  me  will  not  believe  any 
harm  of  me,  and  the  people  who  don't  like  me  may 
believe  what  they  please.  But  I'm  very  glad  you 
showed  me  that  article,  disgusting  as  it  is.' 

'I  was  beginning  to  be  sorry  I  had  brought  it.' 

'No.  You  did  me  a  service,  for  I  had  no  idea  that 
any  one  was  going  to  take  advantage  of  my  divorce  to 
make  a  cowardly  attack  on  my  friend — I  mean  Mr.  Van 
Torp.  I  shall  certainly  not  make  any  defence  before 
the  Patriarch,  but  I  shall  make  a  statement  which  will 
go  to  the  right  people,  saying  that  I  met  Mr.  Van  Torp 
in  a  lawyer's  chambers  in  the  Temple,  that  is,  in  a  place 
of  business,  and  about  a  matter  of  business,  and  that 
there  was  no  secret  about  it,  because  my  husband's 
servant  called  the  cab  that  took  me  there,  and  gave 
the  cabman  the  address.  I  often  do  go  out  without 
telling  any  one,  and  I  let  myself  in  with  a  latch-key 
when  I  come  home,  but  on  that  particular  occasion  I 


CHAP,  x  THE   PR1MADONNA  225 

did  neither.  Will  you  say  that  if  you  hear  me  talked 
about?' 

'Of  course  I  will.' 

Nevertheless,  Margaret  thought  that  Lady  Maud 
might  have  given  her  a  little  information  about  the 
' matter  of  business'  which  had  involved  such  a  large 
sum  of  money,  and  had  produced  such  important  con 
sequences. 


CHAPTER  XI 

MR.  VAN  TORP  was  walking  slowly  down  the  Elm  Walk 
in  the  park  at  Oxley  Paddox.  The  ancient  trees  were 
not  hi  full  leaf  yet,  but  there  were  myriads  of  tiny  green 
feather  points  all  over  the  rough  brown  branches  and 
the  smoother  twigs,  and  their  soft  colour  tinted  the 
luminous  spring  ah-.  High  overhead  all  sorts  and  con 
ditions  of  little  birds  were  chirping  and  trilling  and 
chattering  together  and  by  turns,  and  on  the  ground  the 
sparrows  were  excessively  busy  and  talkative,  while  the 
squirrels  made  wild  dashes  across  the  open,  and  stopped 
suddenly  to  sit  bolt  upright  and  look  about  them,  and 
then  dashed  on  again. 

Little  Ida  walked  beside  the  millionaire  in  silence, 
trustfully  holding  one  of  his  hands,  and  as  she  watched 
the  sparrows  she  tried  to  make  out  what  sort  of  sound 
they  could  be  making  when  they  hopped  forward  and 
opened  their  bills  so  wide  that  she  could  distinctly  see 
their  little  tongues.  Mr.  Van  Torp's  other  hand  held  a 
newspaper,  and  he  was  reading  the  article  about  him 
self  which  Margaret  had  shown  to  Lady  Maud.  He 
did  not  take  that  particular  paper,  but  a  marked  copy 
had  been  sent  to  him,  and  in  due  course  had  been  ironed 
and  laid  on  the  breakfast-table  with  those  that  came 
regularly.  The  article  was  marked  in  red  pencil. 

226 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  227 

He  read  it  slowly  with  a  perfectly  blank  expression, 
as  if  it  concerned  some  one  he  did  not  know.  Once  only, 
when  he  came  upon  the  allusion  to  the  little  girl,  his 
eyes  left  the  page  and  glanced  quietly  down  at  the  large 
red  felt  hat  with  its  knot  of  ribbands  that  moved  along 
beside  him,  and  hid  all  the  child's  face  except  the  deli 
cate  chin  and  the  corner  of  the  pathetic  little  mouth. 
She  did  not  know  that  he  looked  down  at  her,  for  she 
was  intent  on  the  sparrows,  and  he  went  back  to  the 
article  and  read  to  the  end. 

Then,  in  order  to  fold  the  paper,  he  gently  let  go  of 
Ida's  hand,  and  she  looked  up  into  his  face.  He  did 
not  speak,  but  his  lips  moved  a  little  as  he  doubled 
the  sheet  to  put  it  into  his  pocket;  and  instantly  the 
child's  expression  changed,  and  she  looked  hurt  and 
frightened,  and  stretched  up  her  hand  quickly  to  cover 
his  mouth,  as  if  to  hide  the  words  his  lips  were  silently 
forming. 

'Please,  please!'  she  said,  in  her  slightly  monotonous 
voice.  'You  promised  me  you  wouldn't  any  more!' 

'Quite  right,  my  dear/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp,  smil 
ing,  'and  I  apologise.  You  must  make  me  pay  a  for 
feit  every  time  I  do  it.  What  shall  the  forfeit  be? 
Chocolates?' 

She  watched  his  lips,  and  understood  as  well  as  if  she 
had  heard. 

'No,'  she  answered  demurely.  'You  mustn't  laugh. 
When  I've  done  anything  wicked  and  am  sorry,  I  say 
the  little  prayer  Miss  More  taught  me.  Perhaps  you'd 
better  learn  it  too.' 


228  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xi 

'If  you  said  it  for  me/  suggested  Mr.  Van  Torp  gravely, 
'it  would  be  more  likely  to  work.' 

'Oh  no!  That  wouldn't  do  at  all!  You  must  say 
it  for  yourself.  I'll  teach  it  to  you  if  you  like.  Shall 
I?' 

'What  must  I  say?'  asked  the  financier. 

'Well,  it's  made  up  for  me,  you  see,  and  besides,  I've 
shortened  it  a  wee  bit.  What  I  say  is:  "Dear  God, 
please  forgive  me  this  time,  and  make  me  never  want 
to  do  it  again.  Amen."  Can  you  remember  that,  do 
you  think?' 

'I  think  I  could,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'Please  forgive 
me  and  make  me  never  do  it  again.' 

'Never  want  to  do  it  again,'  corrected  little  Ida  with 
emphasis.  'You  must  try  not  even  to  want  to  say 
dreadful  things.  And  then  you  must  say  "Amen." 
That's  important.' 

'Amen/  repeated  the  millionaire. 

At  this  juncture  the  discordant  toot  of  an  approach 
ing  motor-car  was  heard  above  the  singing  of  the  birds. 
Mr.  Van  Torp  turned  his  head  quickly  in  the  direction 
of  the  sound,  and  at  the  same  time  instinctively  led 
the  little  girl  towards  one  side  of  the  road.  She  appar 
ently  understood,  for  she  asked  no  questions.  There 
was  a  turn  hi  the  drive  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  away, 
where  the  Elm  Walk  ended,  and  an  instant  later  an 
enormous  white  motor-car  whizzed  into  sight,  rushed 
furiously  towards  the  two,  and  was  brought  to  a  stand 
still  in  an  uncommonly  short  time,  close  beside  them. 
An  active  man,  in  the  usual  driver's  disguise  of  the  mod- 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  229 

ern  motorist,  jumped  down,  and  at  the  same  instant 
pushed  his  goggles  up  over  the  visor  of  his  cap  and 
loosened  the  collar  of  his  wide  coat,  displaying  the  face 
of  Constantine  Logotheti. 

'Oh,  it's  you,  is  it?'  Mr.  Van  Torp  asked  the  wholly 
superfluous  question  in  a  displeased  tone.  'How  did 
you  get  in?  I've  given  particular  orders  to  let  in  no 
automobiles.' 

'I  always  get  in  everywhere,'  answered  Logotheti 
coolly.  'May  I  see  you  alone  for  a  few  minutes?' 

'If  it's  business,  you'd  better  see  Mr.  Bamberger/ 
said  Van  Torp.  'I  came  here  for  a  rest.  Mr.  Bam 
berger  has  come  over  for  a  few  days.  You'll  find  him 
at  his  chambers  in  Hare  Court.' 

'No,'  returned  Logotheti,  'it's  a  private  matter.  I 
shall  not  keep  you  long.' 

'Then  run  us  up  to  the  house  in  your  new  go-cart/ 

Mr.  Van  Torp  lifted  little  Ida  into  the  motor  as  if  she 
had  been  a  rather  fragile  china  doll  instead  of  a  girl 
nine  years  old  and  quite  able  to  get  up  alone,  and  before 
she  could  sit  down  he  was  beside  her.  Logotheti  jumped 
up  beside  the  chauffeur  and  the  machine  ran  up  the 
drive  at  breakneck  speed.  Two  minutes  later  they  all 
got  out  more  than  a  mile  farther  on,  at  the  door  of  the 
big  old  house.  Ida  ran  away  to  find  Miss  More;  the  two 
men  entered  together,  and  went  into  the  study. 

The  room  had  been  built  in  the  time  of  Edward  Sixth, 
had  been  decorated  afresh  under  Charles  the  Second, 
the  furniture  was  of  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  and  the 
carpet  was  a  modern  Turkish  one,  woven  in  colours  as 


230  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

fresh  as  paint  to  fit  the  room,  and  as  thick  as  a  down 
quilt:  it  was  the  sort  of  carpet  which  has  come  into 
existence  with  the  modern  hotel. 

'Well?'  Mr.  Van  Torp  uttered  the  monosyllable  as 
he  sat  down  in  his  own  chair  and  pointed  to  a  much  less 
comfortable  one,  which  Logotheti  took. 

'There's  an  article  about  you/  said  the  latter,  pro 
ducing  a  paper. 

'I've  read  it/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp  in  a  tone  of 
stony  indifference. 

'I  thought  that  was  likely.    Do  you  take  the  paper ?' 

'No.    Do  you?' 

'No,  it  was  sent  to  me/  Logotheti  answered.  'Did 
you  happen  to  glance  at  the  address  on  the  wrapper  of 
the  one  that  came  to  you?' 

'My  valet  opens  all  the  papers  and  irons  them.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp  looked  very  bored  as  he  said  this,  and 
he  stared  stonily  at  the  pink  and  green  waistcoat  which 
his  visitor's  unfastened  coat  exposed  to  view.  Hun 
dreds  of  little  gold  beads  were  sewn  upon  it  at  the  inter 
sections  of  the  pattern.  It  was  a  marvellous  creation. 

'I  had  seen  the  handwriting  on  the  one  addressed 
to  me  before/  Logotheti  said. 

'Oh,  you  had,  had  you?' 

Mr.  Van  Torp  asked  the  question  in  a  dull  tone  with 
out  the  slightest  apparent  interest  in  the  answer. 

'Yes,'  Logotheti  replied,  not  paying  any  attention 
to  his  host's  indifference.  'I  received  an  anonymous 
letter  last  winter,  and  the  writing  of  the  address  was 
the  same.' 


CHAP,  xi  THE   PRIMADONNA  231 

'It  was,  was  it?' 

The  millionaire's  tone  did  not  change  in  the  least, 
and  he  continued  to  admire  the  waistcoat.  His  manner 
might  have  disconcerted  a  person  of  less  assurance  than 
the  Greek,  but  in  the  matter  of  nerves  the  two  financiers 
were  well  matched. 

'Yes,'  Logotheti  answered,  'and  the  anonymous  letter 
was  about  you,  and  contained  some  of  the  stories  that 
are  printed  in  this  article.' 

'Oh,  it  did,  did  it?' 

'Yes.  There  was  an  account  of  your  interview  with 
the  Primadonna  at  a  hotel  in  New  York.  I  remember 
that  particularly  well.' 

'Oh,  you  do,  do  you?' 

'Yes.  The  identity  of  the  handwriting  and  the 
similarity  of  the  wording  make  it  look  as  if  the  article 
and  the  letter  had  been  written  by  the  same  person.' 

'Well,  suppose  they  were  —  I  don't  see  anything  funny 
about  that.' 

Thereupon  Mr.  Van  Torp  turned  at  last  from  the  con 
templation  of  the  waistcoat  and  looked  out  of  the  bay- 
window  at  the  distant  trees,  as  if  he  were  excessively 
weary  of  Logo  the  ti's  talk. 

'It  occurred  to  me,'  said  the  latter,  'that  you  might 
like  to  stop  any  further  allusions  to  Miss  Donne,  and 
that  if  you  happened  to  recognize  the  handwriting  you 
might  be  able  to  do  so  effectually.' 

'There's  nothing  against  Madame  Cordova  in  the 
article,'  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp,  and  his  aggressive  blue 
eyes  turned  sharply  to  his  visitor's  almond-shaped 


232  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

brown  ones.  'You  can't  say  there's  a  word  against 
her.' 

'  There  may  be  in  the  next  one/  suggested  Logotheti, 
meeting  the  look  without  emotion.  '  When  people  send 
anonymous  letters  about  broadcast  to  injure  men  like 
you  and  me,  they  are  not  likely  to  stick  at  such  a  matter 
as  a  woman's  reputation.' 

1  Well  —  maybe  not/  Mr.  Van  Torp  turned  his  sharp 
eyes  elsewhere.  'You  seem  to  take  quite  an  interest 
in  Madame  Cordova,  Mr.  Logotheti/  he  observed,  in  an 
indifferent  tone. 

'I  knew  her  before  she  went  on  the  stage,  and  I  think 
I  may  call  myself  a  friend  of  hers.  At  all  events,  I  wish 
to  spare  her  any  annoyance  from  the  papers  if  I  can, 
and  if  you  have  any  regard  for  her  you  will  help  me,  I'm 
sure.' 

'I  have  the  highest  regard  for  Madame  Cordova/ 
said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  and  there  was  a  perceptible  change 
in  his  tone;  'but  after  this,  I  guess  the  best  way  I  can 
show  it  is  to  keep  out  of  her  track.  That's  about  all 
there  is  to  do.  You  don't  suppose  I'm  going  to  bring 
an  action  against  that  paper,  do  you?' 

'Hardly!'     Logotheti  smiled. 

'Well,  then,  what  do  you  expect  me  to  do,  Mr.  Logo 
theti?' 

Again  the  eyes  of  the  two  men  met. 

'I'll  tell  you/  answered  the  Greek.  'The  story  about 
your  visit  to  Miss  Donne  in  New  York  is  perfectly  true.' 

'You're  pretty  frank/  observed  the  American. 

'Yes,  I  am.     Very  good.    The  man  who  wrote  the 


CHAP,  xi  THE   PRIMADONNA  233 

letter  and  the  article  knows  you,  and  that  probably 
means  that  you  have  known  him,  though  you  may  never 
have  taken  any  notice  of  him.  He  hates  you,  for  some 
reason,  and  means  to  injure  you  if  he  can.  Just  take 
the  trouble  to  find  out  who  he  is  and  suppress  him,  will 
you?  If  you  don't,  he  will  throw  more  mud  at  honest 
women.  He  is  probably  some  underling  whose  feelings 
you  have  hurt,  or  who  has  lost  money  by  you,  or  both.' 

'  There's  something  in  that/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
showing  a  little  more  interest.  '  Do  you  happen  to  have 
any  of  his  writing  about  you?  I'll  look  at  it.' 

Logotheti  took  a  letter  and  a  torn  piece  of  brown  paper 
from  his  pocket  and  handed  both  to  his  companion. 

'Read  the  letter,  if  you  like,'  he  said.  'The  hand 
writing  seems  to  be  the  same  as  that  on  the  wrapper.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp  first  compared  the  address,  and  then  pro 
ceeded  to  read  the  anonymous  letter.  Logotheti  watched 
his  face  quietly,  but  it  did  not  change  in  the  least.  When 
he  had  finished,  he  folded  the  sheet,  replaced  it  in  the 
envelope,  and  returned  it  with  the  bit  of  paper. 

'Much  obliged,'  he  said,  and  he  looked  out  of  the  win 
dow  again  and  was  silent. 

Logotheti  leaned  back  in  his  chair  as  he  put  the  papers 
into  his  pocket  again,  and  presently,  as  Mr.  Van  Torp 
did  not  seem  inclined  to  say  anything  more,  he  rose  to 
go.  The  American  did  not  move,  and  still  looked  out 
of  the  window. 

'You  originally  belonged  to  the  East,  Mr.  Logotheti, 
didn't  you?'  he  asked  suddenly. 

'Yes.     I'm  a  Greek  and  a  Turkish  subject/ 


234  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

'Do  you  happen  to  know  the  Patriarch  of  Constanti 
nople?' 

Logotheti  stared  in  surprise,  taken  off  his  guard  for 
once. 

'Very  well  indeed/  he  answered  after  an  instant. 
'He  is  my  uncle.' 

'Why,  now,  that's  quite  interesting!'  observed  Mr. 
Van  Torp,  rising  deliberately  and  thrusting  his  hands 
into  his  pockets. 

Logotheti,  who  knew  nothing  about  the  details  of 
Lady  Maud's  pending  divorce,  could  not  imagine  what 
the  American  was  driving  at,  and  waited  for  more.  Mr. 
Van  Torp  began  to  walk  up  and  down,  with  his  rather 
clumsy  gait,  digging  his  heels  into  vivid  depths  of  the 
new  Smyrna  carpet  at  every  step. 

'I  wasn't  going  to  tell  you/  he  said  at  last,  'but  I  may 
just  as  well.  Most  of  the  accusations  in  that  letter  are 
lies.  I  didn't  blow  up  the  subway.  I  know  it  was 
done  on  purpose,  of  course,  but  I  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it,  and  any  man  who  says  I  had,  takes  me  for  a  fool, 
which  you'll  probably  allow  I'm  not.  You're  a  man  of 
business,  Mr.  Logotheti.  There  had  been  a  fall  in  Nickel, 
and  for  weeks  before  the  explosion  I'd  been  making 
a  considerable  personal  sacrifice  to  steady  things.  Now 
you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  all  big  accidents  are  bad 
for  the  market  when  it's  shaky.  Do  you  suppose  I'd 
have  deliberately  produced  one  just  then?  Besides, 
I'm  not  a  criminal.  I  didn't  blow  up  the  subway  any 
more  than  I  blew  up  the  Maine  to  bring  on  the  Cuban 
war!  The  man's  a  fool.' 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  235 

'I  quite  agree  with  you,'  said  the  Greek,  listening  with 
interest. 

'Then  there's  another  thing.  That  about  poor  Mrs. 
Moon,  who's  gone  out  of  her  mind.  It's  nonsense  to 
say  I  was  the  reason  of  Bamberger's  divorcing  his  wife. 
In  the  first  place,  there  are  the  records  of  the  divorce, 
and  my  name  was  never  mentioned.  I  was  her  friend, 
that's  all,  and  Bamberger  resented  it  —  he's  a  resentful 
sort  of  man  anyway.  He  thought  she'd  marry  me  as 
soon  as  he  got  the  divorce.  Well,  she  didn't.  She 
married  old  Alvah  Moon,  who  was  the  only  man  she 
ever  cared  for.  The  Lord  knows  how  it  was,  but  that 
wicked  old  scarecrow  made  all  the  women  love  him, 
to  his  dying  day.  I  had  a  high  regard  for  Mrs.  Bam 
berger,  and  I  suppose  she  was  right  to  marry  him  if  she 
liked  him.  Well,  she  married  him  in  too  much  of  a 
hurry,  and  the  child  that  was  born  abroad  was  Bam 
berger's  and  not  his,  and  when  he  found  it  out  he  sent 
the  girl  East  and  would  never  see  her  again,  and  didn't 
leave  her  a  cent  when  he  died.  That's  the  truth  about 
that,  Mr.  Logotheti.  I  tell  you  because  you've  got  that 
letter  in  your  pocket,  and  I'd  rather  have  your  good 
word  than  your  bad  word  in  business  any  day.' 

' Thank  you,'  answered  Logotheti.  'I'm  glad  to  know 
the  facts  hi  the  case,  though  I  never  could  see  what  a 
man's  private  life  can  have  to  do  with  his  reputation 
in  the  money  market!' 

'Well,  it  has,  in  some  countries.  Different  kinds  of 
cats  have  different  kinds  of  ways.  There's  one  thing 
more,  but  it's  not  in  the  letter,  it's  in  the  article.  That's 


236  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

about  Countess  Leven,  and  it's  the  worst  lie  of  the  lot, 
for  there's  not  a  better  woman  than  she  is  from  here  to 
China.  I'm  not  at  liberty  to  tell  you  anything  of  the 
matter  she's  interested  in  and  on  which  she  consults 
me.  But  her  father  is  my  next  neighbour  here,  and  I 
seem  to  be  welcome  at  his  house;  he's  a  pretty  sensible 
man,  and  that  makes  for  her,  it  seems  to  me.  As  for 
that  husband  of  hers,  we've  a  good  name  in  America 
for  men  like  him.  We'd  call  him  a  skunk  over  there. 
I  suppose  the  English  word  is  polecat,  but  it  doesn't 
say  as  much.  I  don't  think  there's  anything  else  I 
want  to  tell  you.' 

'You  spoke  of  my  uncle,  the  Patriarch/  observed 
Logotheti. 

'Did  I?  Yes.  Well,  what  sort  of  a  gentleman  is  he, 
anyway?' 

The  question  seemed  rather  vague  to  the  Greek. 

'How  do  you  mean?'  he  inquired,  buttoning  his  coat 
over  the  wonderful  waistcoat. 

'Is  he  a  friendly  kind  of  a  person,  I  mean?  Obliging, 
if  you  take  him  the  right  way?  That's  what  I  mean. 
Or  does  he  get  on  his  ear  right  away?' 

'I  should  say,'  answered  Logotheti,  without  a  smile, 
'  that  he  gets  on  his  ear  right  away  —  if  that  means  the 
opposite  of  being  friendly  and  obliging.  But  I  may 
be  prejudiced,  for  he  does  not  approve  of  me/ 

'Why  not,  Mr.  Logotheti?' 

'My  uncle  says  I'm  a  pagan,  and  worship  idols/ 

'Maybe  he  means  the  Golden  Calf/  suggested  Mr.  Van 
Torp  gravely. 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  237 

Logo  the  ti  laughed. 

'The  other  deity  in  business  is  the  Brazen  Serpent,  I 
believe/  he  retorted. 

'The  two  would  look  pretty  well  out  there  on  my 
lawn/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp;  his  hard  face  relaxing 
a  little. 

'To  return  to  the  point.  Can  I  be  of  any  use  to  you 
with  the  Patriarch?  We  are  not  on  bad  terms,  though 
he  does  think  me  a  heathen.  Is  there  anything  I  can 
do?7 

'Thank  you,  not  at  present.  Much  obliged.  I  only 
wanted  to  know/ 

Logotheti's  curiosity  was  destined  to  remain  unsatis 
fied.  He  refused  Mr.  Van  Torp's  not  very  pressing  in 
vitation  to  stay  to  luncheon,  given  at  the  very  moment 
when  he  was  getting  into  his  motor,  and  a  few  seconds 
later  he  was  tearing  down  the  avenue. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  stood  on  the  steps  till  he  was  out  of 
sight  and  then  came  down  himself  and  strolled  slowly 
away  towards  the  trees  again,  his  hands  behind  him  and 
his  eyes  constantly  bent  upon  the  road,  three  paces 
ahead. 

He  was  not  always  quite  truthful.  Scruples  were  not 
continually  uppermost  in  his  mind.  For  instance,  what 
he  had  told  Lady  Maud  about  his  engagement  to  poor 
Miss  Bamberger  did  not  quite  agree  with  what  he  had 
said  to  Margaret  on  the  steamer. 

In  certain  markets  in  New  York,  three  kinds  of  eggs 
are  offered  for  sale,  namely,  Eggs,  Fresh  Eggs,  and 
Strictly  Fresh  Eggs.  I  have  seen  the  advertisement. 


238  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

Similarly  in  Mr.  Van  Torp's  opinion  there  were  three 
sorts  of  stories,  to  wit,  Stories,  True  Stories,  and  Strictly 
True  Stories.  Clearly,  each  account  of  his  engagement 
must  have  belonged  to  one  of  these  classes,  as  well  as  the 
general  statement  he  had  made  to  Logotheti  about  the 
charges  brought  against  him  in  the  anonymous  letter. 
The  reason  why  he  had  made  that  statement  was  plain 
enough;  he  meant  it  to  be  repeated  to  Margaret  because 
he  really  wished  her  to  think  well  of  him.  Moreover,  he 
had  recognised  the  handwriting  at  once  as  that  of  Mr. 
Feist,  Isidore  Bamberger's  former  secretary,  who  knew 
a  good  many  things  and  might  turn  out  a  dangerous 
enemy. 

But  Logotheti,  who  knew  something  of  men,  and  had 
dealt  with  some  very  accomplished  experts  in  fraud  from 
New  York  and  London  to  Constantinople,  had  his 
doubts  about  the  truth  of  what  he  had  heard,  and  under 
stood  at  once  why  the  usually  reticent  American  had 
talked  so  much  about  himself.  Van  Torp,  he  was  sure, 
was  in  love  with  the  singer;  that  was  his  weak  side,  and 
in  whatever  affected  her  he  might  behave  like  a  brute 
or  a  baby,  but  would  certainly  act  with  something  like 
rudimentary  simplicity  in  either  case.  In  Logotheti's 
opinion  Northern  and  English-speaking  men  might  be 
as  profound  as  Persians  in  matters  of  money,  and  some 
times  were,  but  where  women  were  concerned  they  were 
generally  little  better  than  sentimental  children,  unless 
they  were  mere  animals.  Not  one  in  a  thousand  cared 
for  the  society  of  women,  or  even  of  one  particular 
woman,  for  its  own  sake,  for  the  companionship,  and 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  239 

the  exchange  of  ideas  about  things  of  which  women 
know  how  to  think.  To  the  better  sort,  that  is,  to  the 
sentimental  ones,  a  woman  always  seemed  what  she 
was  not,  a  goddess,  a  saint,  or  a  sort  of  glorified  sister; 
to  the  rest,  she  was  an  instrument  of  amusement  and 
pleasure,  more  or  less  necessary  and  more  or  less  pur 
chasable.  Perhaps  an  Englishman  or  an  American, 
judging  Greeks  from  what  he  could  learn  about  them 
in  ordinary  intercourse,  would  get  about  as  near  the 
truth  as  Logotheti  did.  In  his  main  conclusion  the 
latter  was  probably  right;  Mr.  Van  Torp's  affections 
might  be  of  such  exuberant  nature  as  would  admit  of 
being  divided  between  two  or  three  objects  at  the  same 
time,  or  they  might  not.  But  when  he  spoke  of  having 
the  ' highest  regard'  for  Madame  Cordova,  without 
denying  the  facts  about  the  interview  in  which  he  had 
asked  her  to  marry  him  and  had  lost  his  head  because 
she  refused,  he  was  at  least  admitting  that  he  was  in 
love  with  her,  or  had  been  at  that  time. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  also  confessed  that  he  had  entertained 
a  'high  regard'  for  the  beautiful  Mrs.  Bamberger,  now 
unhappily  insane.  It  was  noticeable  that  he  had  not 
used  the  same  expression  in  speaking  of  Lady  Maud. 
Nevertheless,  as  in  the  Bamberger  affair,  he  appeared 
as  the  chief  cause  of  trouble  between  husband  and  wife. 
Logotheti  was  considered  ' dangerous'  even  in  Paris, 
and  his  experiences  had  not  been  dull;  but,  so  far,  he 
had  found  his  way  through  life  without  inadvertently 
stepping  upon  any  of  those  concealed  traps  through 
which  the  gay  and  unwary  of  both  sexes  are  so  often 


240  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xi 

dropped  into  the  divorce  court,  to  the  surprise  of  every 
body.  It  seemed  the  more  strange  to  him  that  Rufus 
Van  Torp,  only  a  few  years  his  senior,  should  now  find 
himself  in  that  position  for  the  second  time.  Yet  Van 
Torp  was  not  a  ladies'  man;  he  was  hard-featured,  rough 
of  speech,  and  clumsy  of  figure,  and  it  was  impossible  to 
believe  that  any  woman  could  think  him  good-looking 
or  be  carried  away  by  his  talk.  The  case  of  Mrs. 
Bamberger  could  be  explained;  she  might  have  had 
beauty,  but  she  could  have  had  little  else  that  would 
have  appealed  to  such  a  man  as  Logo  the  ti.  But  there 
was  Lady  Maud,  an  acknowledged  beauty  in  London, 
thoroughbred,  aristocratic,  not  easily  shocked  perhaps, 
but  easily  disgusted,  like  most  women  of  her  class;  and 
there  was  no  doubt  but  that  her  husband  had  found  her 
under  extremely  strange  circumstances,  in  the  act  of 
receiving  from  Van  Torp  a  large  sum  of  money  for  which 
she  altogether  declined  to  account.  Van  Torp  had  not 
denied  that  story  either,  so  it  was  probably  true.  Yet 
Logotheti,  whom  so  many  women  thought  irresistible, 
had  felt  instinctively  that  she  was  one  of  those  who 
would  smile  serenely  upon  the  most  skilful  and  persist 
ent  besieger  from  the  security  of  an  impregnable  fortress 
of  virtue.  Logotheti  did  not  naturally  feel  unqualified 
respect  for  many  women,  but  since  he  had  known  Lady 
Maud  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  that  any  one  could 
take  the  smallest  liberty  with  her.  On  the  other  hand, 
though  he  was  genuinely  in  love  with  Margaret  and 
desired  nothing  so  much  as  to  marry  her,  he  had  never 
been  in  the  least  afraid  of  her,  and  he  had  deliberately 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  241 

attempted  to  carry  her  off  against  her  will;  and  if  she 
had  looked  upon  his  conduct  then  as  anything  more 
serious  than  a  mad  prank,  she  had  certainly  forgiven 
it  very  soon. 

The  only  reason  for  his  flying  visit  to  Derbyshire  had 
been  his  desire  to  keep  Margaret's  name  out  of  an  im 
pending  scandal  in  which  he  foresaw  that  Mr.  Van  Torp 
and  Lady  Maud  were  to  be  the  central  figures,  and  he 
believed  that  he  had  done  something  to  bring  about  that 
result,  if  he  had  started  the  millionaire  on  the  right 
scent.  He  judged  Van  Torp  to  be  a  good  hater  and  a 
man  of  many  resources,  who  would  not  now  be  satisfied 
till  he  had  the  anonymous  writer  of  the  letter  and  the 
article  in  his  power.  Logotheti  had  no  means  of  guess 
ing  who  the  culprit  was,  and  did  not  care  to  know. 

He  reached  town  late  in  the  afternoon,  having  covered 
something  like  three  hundred  miles  since  early  morning. 
About  seven  o'clock  he  stopped  at  Margaret's  door,  in 
the  hope  of  finding  her  at  home  and  of  being  asked  to 
dine  alone  with  her,  but  as  he  got  out  of  his  hansom  and 
sent  it  away  he  heard  the  door  shut  and  he  found  him 
self  face  to  face  with  Paul  Griggs. 

'Miss  Donne  is  out/  said  the  author,  as  they  shook 
hands.  '  She's  been  spending  the  day  with  the  Creed- 
mores,  and  when  I  rang  she  had  just  telephoned  that 
she  would  not  be  back  for  dinner ! ' 

'What  a  bore!'  exclaimed  Logotheti. 

The  two  men  walked  slowly  along  the  pavement  to 
gether,  and  for  some  time  neither  spoke.  Logotheti  had 
nothing  to  do,  or  believed  so  because  he  was  disappointed 


242  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xi 

in  not  finding  Margaret  in.  The  elder  man  looked  pre 
occupied,  and  the  Greek  was  the  first  to  speak. 

'I  suppose  you've  seen  that  shameful  article  about 
Van  Torp,'  he  said. 

'  Yes.  Somebody  sent  me  a  marked  copy  of  the  paper. 
Do  you  know  whether  Miss  Donne  has  seen  it?' 

'Yes.  She  got  a  marked  copy  too.  So  did  I.  What 
do  you  think  of  it?' 

1  Just  what  you  do,  I  fancy.  Have  you  any  idea  who 
wrote  it?' 

'Probably  some  underling  in  the  Nickel  Trust  whom 
Van  Torp  has  offended  without  knowing  it,  or  who  has 
lost  money  by  him.' 

Griggs  glanced  at  his  companion's  face,  for  the  hy 
pothesis  struck  him  as  being  tenable. 

'Unless  it  is  some  enemy  of  Countess  Leven's,'  he  sug 
gested.  'Her  husband  is  really  going  to  divorce  her, 
as  the  article  says.' 

'I  suppose  she  will  defend  herself,'  said  Logo  the  ti. 

'If  she  has  a  chance.' 

'What  do  you  mean?7 

'  Do  you  happen  to  know  what  sort  of  man  the  present 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople  is?' 

Logotheti's  jaw  dropped,  and  he  slackened  his  pace. 

'  What  in  the  world  —  - '  he  began,  but  did  not  finish 
the  sentence.  'That's  the  second  time  to-day  I've  been 
asked  about  him.' 

'That's  very  natural,'  said  Griggs  calmly.  'You're 
one  of  the  very  few  men  in  town  who  are  likely  to  know 
him.' 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  243 

'Of  course  I  know  him/  answered  Logo  the  ti,  still 
mystified.  'He's  my  uncle/ 

'Really?    That's  very  lucky!' 

'Look  here,  Griggs,  is  this  some  silly  joke?' 

'A  joke?  Certainly  not.  Lady  Maud's  husband  can 
only  get  a  divorce  through  the  Patriarch  because  he 
married  her  out  of  Russia.  You  know  about  that  law, 
don't  you?' 

Logotheti  understood  at  last. 

'No/  he  said,  '  I  never  heard  of  it.  But  if  that  is  the 
case  I  may  be  able  to  do  something  —  not  that  I'm  con 
sidered  orthodox  at  the  Patriarchate!  The  old  gentle 
man  has  been  told  that  I'm  trying  to  revive  the  worship 
of  the  Greek  gods  and  have  built  a  temple  to  Aphrodite 
Xenia  in  the  Place  de  la  Concorde!' 

'You're  quite  capable  of  it/  observed  Griggs. 

'Oh,  quite!  Only,  I've  not  done  it  yet.  I'll  see 
what  I  can  do.  Are  you  much  interested  in  the  matter? ' 

'Only  on  general  principles,  because  I  believe  Lady 
Maud  is  perfectly  straight,  and  it  is  a  shame  that  such 
a  creature  as  Leven  should  be  allowed  to  divorce  an 
honest  Englishwoman.  By  the  bye  —  speaking  of  her 
reminds  me  of  that  dinner  at  the  Turkish  Embassy  — 
do  you  remember  a  disagreeable-looking  man  who  sat 
next  to  me,  one  Feist,  a  countryman  of  mine?' 

'Rather!    I  wondered  how  he  came  there.' 

'He  had  a  letter  of  introduction  from  the  Turkish 
Minister  in  Washington.  He  is  full  of  good  letters  of 
introduction.' 

'I  should  think  they  would  need  to  be  good/  observed 


244  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XI 

Logotheti.  'With  that  face  of  his  he  would  need  an 
introduction  to  a  Port  Said  gambling-hell  before  they 
would  let  him  in.' 

'I  agree  with  you.  But  he  is  well  provided,  as  I  say, 
and  he  goes  everywhere.  Some  one  has  put  him  down 
at  the  Mutton  Chop.  You  never  go  there,  do  you?' 

'I'm  not   asked,'  laughed  Logotheti.     'And  as  for 
becoming  a  member,  they  say  it's  impossible.' 

'It  takes  ten  or  fifteen  years,'  Griggs  answered,  'and 
then  you  won' t  be  elected  unless  every  one  likes  you.  But 
you  may  be  put  down  as  a  visitor  there  just  as  at  any 
other  club.  This  fellow  Feist,  for  instance  —  we  had 
trouble  with  him  last  night  —  or  rather  this  morning, 
for  it  was  two  o'clock.  He  has  been  dropping  in  often 
of  late,  towards  midnight.  At  first  he  was  more  or  less 
amusing  with  his  stories,  for  he  has  a  wonderful  memory. 
You  know  the  sort  of  funny  man  who  rattles  on  as  if  he 
were  wound  up  for  the  evening,  and  afterwards  you  can 
not  remember  a  word  he  has  said.  It's  all  very  well  for 
a  while,  but  you  soon  get  sick  of  it.  Besides,  this  par 
ticular  specimen  drinks  like  a  whale.' 

'He  looks  as  if  he  did.' 

'Last  night  he  had  been  talking  a  good  deal,  and  most 
of  the  men  who  had  been  there  had  gone  off.  You  know 
there's  only  one  room  at  the  Mutton  Chop,  with  a  long 
table,  and  if  a  man  takes  the  floor  there's  no  escape.  I 
had  come  in  about  one  o'clock  to  get  something  to  eat, 
and  Feist  poured  out  a  steady  stream  of  stories  as  usual, 
though  only  one  or  two  listened  to  him.  Suddenty  his 
eyes  looked  queer,  and  he  stammered,  and  rolled  off  his 


CHAP.  xi.  THE  PRIMADONNA  245 

chair,  and  lay  in  a  heap,  either  dead  drunk  or  in  a  fit,  I 
don't  know  which.' 

'And  I  suppose  you  carried  him  downstairs/  said 
Logotheti,  for  Griggs  was  known  to  be  stronger  than 
other  men,  though  no  longer  young. 

'I  did/  Griggs  answered.  ' That's  usually  my  share 
of  the  proceedings.  The  last  person  I  carried — let  me 
see  —  I  think  it  must  have  been  that  poor  girl  who  died 
at  the  Opera  in  New  York.  We  had  found  Feist's  ad 
dress  in  the  visitors'  book,  and  we  sent  him  home  in  a 
hansom.  I  wonder  whether  he  got  there ! ' 

'I  should  think  the  member  who  put  him  down  would 
be  rather  annoyed/  observed  Logotheti. 

'Yes.  It's  the  first  time  anything  of  that  sort  ever 
happened  at  the  Mutton  Chop,  and  I  fancy  it  will  be 
the  last.  I  don't  think  we  shall  see  Mr.  Feist  again.' 

'I  took  a  particular  dislike  to  his  face/  Logotheti  said. 
*I  remember  thinking  of  him  when  I  went  home  that 
night,  and  wondering  who  he  was  and  what  he  was 
about/ 

'At  first  I  took  him  for  a  detective/  said  Griggs.  'But 
detectives  don't  drink.' 

'What  made  you  think  he  might  be  one?' 

'  He  has  a  very  clever  way  of  leading  the  conversation 
to  a  point  and  then  asking  an  unexpected  question.' 

'Perhaps  he  is  an  amateur/  suggested  Logotheti. 
'He  may  be  a  spy.  Is  Feist  an  American  name?' 

'You  will  find  all  sorts  of  names  in  America.  They 
prove  nothing  in  the  way  of  nationality,  unless  they  are 
English,  Dutch,  or  French,  and  even  then  they  don't 


246  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xi 

prove  much.  I'm  an  American  myself,  and  I  feel  sure 
that  Feist  either  is  one  or  has  spent  many  years  in  the 
country,  in  which  case  he  is  probably  naturalised.  As 
for  his  being  a  spy,  I  don't  think  I  ever  came  across  one 
in  England.' 

'They  come  here  to  rest  in  time  of  peace,  or  to  escape 
hanging  in  other  countries  in  time  of  war,'  said  the 
Greek.  'His  being  at  the  Turkish  Embassy,  of  all  places 
in  the  world,  is  rather  in  favour  of  the  idea.  Do  you 
happen  to  remember  the  name  of  his  hotel?' 

'Are  you  going  to  call  on  him?'  Griggs  asked  with  a 
smile. 

'Perhaps.  He  begins  to  interest  me.  Is  it  indiscreet 
to  ask  what  sort  of  questions  he  put  to  you?' 

'He's  stopping  at  the  Carl  ton  —  if  the  cabby  took 
him  there!  We  gave  the  man  half-a-crown  for  the 
job,  and  took  his  number,  so  I  suppose  it  was  all  right. 
As  for  the  questions  he  asked  me,  that's  another 
matter.' 

Logo  the  ti  glanced  quickly  at  his  companion's  rather 
grim  face,  and  was  silent  for  a  few  moments.  He  judged 
that  Mr.  Feist's  inquiries  must  have  concerned  a  woman, 
since  Griggs  was  so  reticent,  and  it  required  no  great 
ingenuity  to  connect  that  probability  with  one  or  both 
of  the  ladies  who  had  been  at  the  dinner  where  Griggs 
and  Feist  had  first  met. 

'I  think  I  shall  go  and  ask  for  Mr.  Feist/  he  said 
presently.  'I  shall  say  that  I  heard  he  was  ill  and 
wanted  to  know  if  I  could  do  anything  for  him.' 

'I've  no  doubt  he'll  be  much  touched  by  your  kind- 


CHAP.  XI  THE   PRIMADONNA  247 

ness!'  said  Griggs.  'But  please  don't  mention  the 
Mutton  Chop  Club,  if  you  really  see  him.' 

'Oh  no!     Besides,  I  shall  let  him  do  the  talking.' 

'Then  take  care  that  you  don't  let  him  talk  you  to 
death!' 

Logo  the  ti  smiled  as  he  hailed  a  passing  hansom;  he 
nodded  to  his  companion,  told  the  man  to  go  to  the 
Carlton,  and  drove  away,  leaving  Griggs  to  continue  his 
walk  alone. 

The  elderly  man  of  letters  had  not  talked  about  Mr. 
Feist  with  any  special  intention,  and  was  very  far  from 
thinking  that  what  he  had  said  would  lead  to  any  im 
portant  result.  He  liked  the  Greek,  because  he  liked 
most  Orientals,  under  certain  important  reservations 
and  at  a  certain  distance,  and  he  had  lived  amongst 
them  long  enough  not  to  be  surprised  at  anything  they 
did.  Logotheti  had  been  disappointed  in  not  finding 
the  Primadonna  at  home,  and  he  was  not  inclined  to  put 
up  with  the  usual  round  of  an  evening  in  London  during 
the  early  part  of  the  season  as  a  substitute  for  what  he 
had  lost.  He  was  the  more  put  out,  because,  when 
he  had  last  seen  Margaret,  three  or  four  days  earlier,  she 
had  told  him  that  if  he  came  on  that  evening  at  about 
•seven  o'clock  he  would  probably  find  her  alone.  Hav 
ing  nothing  that  looked  at  ell  amusing  to  occupy  him, 
he  was  just  in  the  mood  to  do  anything  unusual  that 
presented  itself. 

Griggs  guessed  at  most  of  these  things,  and  as  he 
walked  along  he  vaguely  pictured  to  himself  the  inter 
view  that  was  likely  to  take  place. 


CHAPTER  XII 

OPINION  was  strongly  against  Mr.  Van  Torp.  A  million 
aire  is  almost  as  good  a  mark  at  which  to  throw  mud 
as  a  woman  of  the  world  whose  reputation  has  never 
before  been  attacked,  and  when  the  two  can  be  pilloried 
together  it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  ordinary 
people  should  abstain  from  pelting  them  and  calling 
them  bad  names. 

Lady  Maud,  indeed,  was  protected  to  some  extent 
by  her  father  and  brothers,  and  by  many  loyal  friends. 
It  is  happily  still  doubtful  how  far  one  may  go  in  print 
ing  lies  about  an  honest  woman  without  getting  into 
trouble  with  the  law,  and  when  the  lady's  father  is  not 
only  a  peer,  but  has  previously  been  a  barrister  of 
reputation  and  a  popular  and  hard-working  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons  during  a  long  time,  it  is 
generally  safer  to  use  guarded  language;  the  advisa 
bility  of  moderation  also  increases  directly  as  the  num 
ber  and  size  of  the  lady's  brothers,  and  inversely  as 
their  patience.  Therefore,  on  the  whole,  Lady  Maud 
was  much  better  treated  by  the  society  columns  than 
Margaret  at  first  expected. 

On  the  other  hand,  they  vented  their  spleen  and 
sharpened  their  English  on  the  American  financier,  who 
had  no  relations  and  scarcely  any  friends  to  stand  by 

248 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PRIMADONNA  249 

him,  and  was,  moreover,  in  a  foreign  country,  which 
always  seems  to  be  regarded  as  an  aggravating  circum 
stance  when  a  man  gets  into  any  sort  of  trouble.  Isi 
dore  Bamberger  and  Mr.  Feist  had  roused  and  let  loose 
upon  him  a  whole  pack  of  hungry  reporters  and  para 
graph  writers  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

The  papers  did  not  at  first  print  his  name  except  in 
connection  with  the  divorce  of  Lady  Maud.  But  this 
was  a  landmark,  the  smallest  reference  to  which  made 
all  other  allusions  to  him  quite  clear.  It  was  easy  to 
speak  of  Mr.  Van  Torp  as  the  central  figure  in  a  cause 
celebre:  newspapers  love  the  French  language  the  more 
as  they  understand  it  the  less;  just  as  the  gentle  amateur 
in  literature  tries  to  hide  his  cloven  hoof  under  the  thin 
elegance  of  italics. 

Particular  stress  was  laid  upon  the  millionaire's 
dreadful  hypocrisy.  He  taught  in  the  Sunday  Schools 
at  Nickelville,  the  big  village  which  had  sprung  up  at 
his  will  and  which  was  the  headquarters  of  his  sancti 
monious  wickedness.  He  was  compared  to  Solomon, 
not  for  his  wisdom,  but  on  account  of  his  domestic 
arrangements.  He  was  indeed  a  father  to  his  flock.  It 
was  a  touching  sight  to  see  the  little  ones  gathered 
round  the  knees  of  this  great  and  good  man,  and  to  note 
how  an  unconscious  and  affectionate  imitation  reflected 
his  face  in  theirs.  It  was  true  that  there  was  another 
side  to  this  truly  patriarchal  picture.  In  a  city  of  the 
Far  West,  wrote  an  eloquent  paragraph  writer,  a  pale 
face,  once  divinely  beautiful,  was  often  seen  at  the 
barred  window  of  a  madhouse,  and  eyes  that  had  once 


250  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  xil 

looked  too  tenderly  into  those  of  the  Nickelville  Solo 
mon  stared  wildly  at  the  palm-trees  in  the  asylum 
grounds.  This  paragraph  was  rich  in  sentiment. 

There  were  a  good  many  mentions  of  the  explosion 
in  New  York,  too,  and  hints,  dark,  but  uncommonly 
straight,  that  the  great  Sunday  School  teacher  had  been 
the  author  and  stage-manager  of  an  awful  comedy  de 
signed  expressly  to  injure  a  firm  of  contractors  against 
whom  he  had  a  standing  grudge.  In  proof  of  the  asser 
tion,  the  story  went  on  to  say  that  he  had  written  four 
hours  before  the  'accident'  happened  to  give  warning 
of  it  to  the  young  lady  whom  he  was  about  to  marry. 
She  was  a  neurasthenic  young  lady,  and  in  spite  of  the 
warning  she  died  very  suddenly  at  the  theatre  from 
shock  immediately  after  the  explosion,  and  his  note 
was  found  on  her  dressing-table  when  she  was  brought 
home  dead.  Clearly,  if  the  explosion  had  not  been  his 
work,  and  if  he  had  been  informed  of  it  beforehand,  he 
would  have  warned  the  police  and  the  Department  of 
Public  Works  at  the  same  time.  The  young  lady's 
untimely  death  had  not  prevented  him  from  sailing  for 
Europe  three  or  four  days  later,  and  on  the  trip  he  had 
actually  occupied  alone  the  same  '  thousand  dollar  suite ' 
which  he  had  previously  engaged  for  himself  and  his 
bride.  From  this  detail  the  public  might  form  some 
idea  of  the  Nickelville  magnate's  heartless  character. 
In  fact,  if  one-half  of  what  was  written,  telegraphed, 
and  printed  about  Rufus  Van  Torp  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic  during  the  next  fortnight  was  to  be  believed, 
he  had  no  character  at  all. 


CHAP,  xii  THE   PRIMADONNA  251 

To  all  this  he  answered  nothing,  and  he  did  not  take 
the  trouble  to  allude  to  the  matter  in  the  few  letters 
he  wrote  to  his  acquaintances.  Day  after  day  numbers 
of  marked  papers  were  carefully  ironed  and  laid  on  the 
breakfast-table,  after  having  been  read  and  commented 
on  in  the  servants'  hall.  The  butler  began  to  look 
askance  at  him,  Mrs.  Dubbs,  the  housekeeper,  talked 
gloomily  of  giving  warning,  and  the  footmen  gossiped 
with  the  stable  hands;  but  the  men  all  decided  that  it 
was  not  derogatory  to  their  dignity  to  remain  in  the 
service  of  a  master  who  was  soon  to  be  exhibited  in  the 
divorce  court  beside  such  a  'real  lady'  as  Lord  Creed- 
more's  daughter;  the  housemaids  agreed  in  this  view, 
and  the  housekeeper  consulted  Miss  More.  For  Mrs. 
Dubbs  was  an  imposing  person,  morally  and  physically, 
and  had  a  character  to  lose;  and  though  the  place  was 
a  very  good  one  for  her  old  age,  because  the  master 
only  spent  six  weeks  or  two  months  at  Oxley  Paddox 
each  year,  and  never  found  fault,  yet  Mrs.  Dubbs  was 
not  going  to  have  her  name  associated  with  that  of  a 
gentleman  who  blew  up  underground  works  and  took 
Solomon's  view  of  the  domestic  affections.  She  came 
of  very  good  people  in  the  north;  one  of  her  brothers 
was  a  minister,  and  the  other  was  an  assistant  steward 
on  a  large  Scotch  estate. 

Miss  More's  quiet  serenity  was  not  at  all  disturbed 
by  what  was  happening,  for  it  could  hardly  be  supposed 
that  she  was  ignorant  of  the  general  attack  on  Mr.  Van 
Torp,  though  he  did  not  leave  the  papers  lying  about, 
where  little  Ida's  quick  eyes  might  fall  on  a  marked 


252  THE   PPJMADONNA  CHAP.  XII 

passage.  The  housekeeper  waited  for  an  occasion 
when  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  taken  the  child  for  a  drive,  as 
he  often  did,  and  Miss  More  was  established  in  her 
favourite  corner  of  the  garden,  just  out  of  sight  of  the 
house.  Mrs.  Dubbs  first  exposed  the  situation,  then 
expressed  a  strong  opinion  as  to  her  own  respectability, 
and  finally  asked  Miss  More's  advice. 

Miss  More  listened  attentively,  and  waited  till  her 
large  and  sleek  interlocutor  had  absolutely  nothing 
more  to  say.  Then  she  spoke. 

'Mrs.  Dubbs/  she  said,  'do  you  consider  me  a  respect 
able  young  woman?' 

'Oh,  Miss  More!7  cried  the  housekeeper.  'You! 
Indeed,  I'd  put  my  hand  into  the  fire  for  you  any  day!' 

'And  I'm  an  American,  and  I've  known  Mr.  Van 
Torp  several  years,  though  this  is  the  first  time  you  have 
seen  me  here.  Do  you  think  I  would  let  the  child  stay 
an  hour  under  his  roof,  or  stay  here  myself,  if  I  believed 
one  word  of  all  those  wicked  stories  the  papers  are 
publishing?  Look  at  me,  please.  Do  you  think  I 
would?' 

It  was  quite  impossible  to  look  at  Miss  More's  quiet 
healthy  face  and  clear  eyes  and  to  believe  she  would. 
There  are  some  women  of  whom  one  is  sure  at  a  glance 
that  they  are  perfectly  trustworthy  in  every  imaginable 
way,  and  above  even  the  suspicion  of  countenancing 
any  wrong. 

'No,'  answered  Mrs.  Dubbs,  with  honest  conviction, 
'I  don't,  indeed.' 

'I  think,  then/  said  Miss  More,  'that  if  I  feel  I  can 


CHAP.  XII  THE  PRIMADONNA  253 

stay  here,  you  are  safe  in  staying  too.  I  do  not  believe 
any  of  these  slanders,  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  Mr.  Van 
Torp  is  one  of  the  kindest  men  in  the  world.' 

'I  feel  as  if  you  must  be  right,  Miss  More/  replied  the 
housekeeper.  'But  they  do  say  dreadful  things  about 
him,  indeed,  and  he  doesn't  deny  a  word  of  it,  as  he 
ought  to,  in  my  humble  opinion,  though  it's  not  my 
business  to  judge,  of  course,  but  I'll  say  this,  Miss  More, 
and  that  is,  that  if  the  butler's  character  was  publicly 
attacked  in  the  papers,  in  the  way  Mr.  Van  Torp's  is, 
and  if  I  were  Mr.  Van  Torp,  which  of  course  I'm  not,  I'd 
say  "Crookes,  you  may  be  all  right,  but  if  you're  going 
to  be  butler  here  any  longer,  it's  your  duty  to  defend 
yourself  against  these  attacks  upon  you  in  the  papers, 
Crookes,  because  as  a  Christian  man  you  must  not  hide 
your  light  under  a  bushel,  Crookes,  but  let  it  shine 
abroad."  That's  what  I'd  say,  Miss  More,  and  I  should 
like  to  know  if  you  don't  think  I  should  be  right.' 

'If  the  English  and  American  press  united  to  attack 
the  butler's  character/  answered  Miss  More  without  a 
smile,  'I  think  you  would  be  quite  right,  Mrs.  Dubbs. 
But  as  regards  Mr.  Van  Torp's  present  position,  I  am 
sure  he  is  the  best  judge  of  what  he  ought  to  do/ 

These  words  of  wisdom,  and  Miss  More's  truthful 
eyes,  greatly  reassured  the  housekeeper,  who  afterwards 
upbraided  the  servants  for  paying  any  attention  to  such 
wicked  falsehoods;  and  Mr.  Crookes,  the  butler,  wrote 
to  his  aged  mother,  who  was  anxious  about  his  situation, 
to  say  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  must  be  either  a  real  gentle 
man  or  a  very  hardened  criminal  indeed,  because  it 


254  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xil 

was  only  forgers  and  real  gentlemen  who  could  act  so 
precious  cool;  but  that,  on  the  whole,  he,  Crookes,  and 
the  housekeeper,  who  was  a  highly  respectable  person 
and  the  sister  of  a  minister,  as  he  wished  his  mother  to 
remember,  had  made  up  their  minds  that  Mr.  V.  T.  was 
Al,  copper-bottomed  —  Mrs.  Crookes  was  the  widow  of 
a  seafaring  man,  and  lived  at  Liverpool,  and  had  heard 
Lloyd's  rating  quoted  all  her  life  —  and  that  they,  the 
writer  and  Mrs.  Dubbs,  meant  to  see  him  through  his 
troubles,  though  he  was  a  little  trying  at  his  meals,  for 
he  would  have  butter  on  the  table  at  his  dinner,  and  he 
wanted  two  and  three  courses  served  together,  and 
drank  milk  at  his  luncheon,  like  no  Christian  gentleman 
did  that  Mr.  Crookes  had  ever  seen. 

The  financier  might  have  been  amused  if  he  could 
have  read  this  letter,  which  contained  no  allusion  to  the 
material  attractions  of  Torp  Towers  as  a  situation;  for 
like  a  good  many  American  millionaires,  Mr.  Van  Torp 
had  a  blind  spot  on  his  financial  retina.  He  could  deal 
daringly  and  surely  with  vast  sums,  or  he  could  screw 
twice  the  normal  quantity  of  work  out  of  an  underpaid 
clerk;  but  the  household  arithmetic  that  lies  between 
the  two  was  entirely  beyond  his  comprehension.  He 
1  didn't  want  to  be  bothered/  he  said;  he  maintained 
that  he  '  could  make  more  money  in  ten  minutes  than 
he  could  save  in  a  year  by  checking  the  housekeeper's 
accounts';  he  'could  live  on  coffee  and  pie,'  but  if  he 
chose  to  hire  the  chef  of  the  Cafe  Anglais  to  cook  for 
him  at  five  thousand  dollars  a  year  he  '  didn't  want  to 
know  the  price  of  a  truffled  pheasant  or  a  chaudfroid 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PIUMADONNA  255 

of  ortolans.'  That  was  his  way,  and  it  was  good  enough 
for  him.  What  was  the  use  of  having  made  money  if 
you  were  to  be  bothered?  And  besides,  he  concluded, 
'it  was  none  of  anybody's  blank  blank  business  what 
he  did.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp  did  not  hesitate  to  borrow  similes  from 
another  world  when  his  rather  limited  command  of 
refined  language  was  unequal  to  the  occasion. 

But  at  the  present  juncture,  though  his  face  did  not 
change,  and  though  he  slept  as  soundly  and  had  as 
good  an  appetite  as  usual,  no  words  with  which  he  was 
acquainted  could  express  his  feelings  at  all.  He  had, 
indeed,  consigned  the  writer  of  the  first  article  to  per 
dition  with  some  satisfaction;  but  after  his  interview 
with  Logotheti,  when  he  had  understood  that  a  general 
attack  upon  him  had  begun,  he  gathered  his  strength 
in  silence  and  studied  the  position  with  all  the  concen 
tration  of  earnest  thought  which  his  exceptional  nature 
could  command. 

He  had  recognised  Feist's  handwriting,  and  he  re 
membered  the  man  as  his  partner's  former  secretary. 
Feist  might  have  written  the  letter  to  Logotheti  and  the 
first  article,  but  Van  Torp  did  not  believe  him  capable 
of  raising  a  general  hue  and  cry  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  It  undoubtedly  happened  sometimes  that 
when  a  fire  had  been  smouldering  long  unseen  a  single 
spark  sufficed  to  start  the  blaze,  but  Mr.  Van  Torp  was 
too  well  informed  as  to  public  opinion  about  him  to 
have  been  in  ignorance  of  any  general  feeling  against 
him,  if  it  had  existed;  and  the  present  attack  was  of  too 


256  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xil 

personal  a  nature  to  have  been  devised  by  financial 
rivals.  Besides,  the  Nickel  Trust  had  recently  ab 
sorbed  all  its  competitiors  to  such  an  extent  that  it  had 
no  rivals  at  all,  and  the  dangers  that  threatened  it  lay 
on  the  one  hand  in  the  growing  strength  of  the  Labour 
Party  in  its  great  movement  against  capital,  and  on 
the  other  in  its  position  with  regard  to  recent  American 
legislation  about  Trusts.  From  the  beginning  Mr.  Van 
Torp  had  been  certain  that  the  campaign  of  defamation 
had  not  been  begun  by  the  Unions,  and  by  its  nature  it 
could  have  no  connection  with  the  legal  aspect  of  his 
position.  It  was  therefore  clear  that  war  had  been 
declared  upon  him  by  one  or  more  individuals  on  purely 
personal  grounds,  and  that  Mr.  Feist  was  but  the  chief 
instrument  in  the  hands  of  an  unknown  enemy. 

But  at  first  sight  it  did  not  look  as  if  his  assailant 
were  Isidore  Bamberger.  The  violent  attack  on  him 
might  not  affect  the  credit  of  the  Nickel  Trust,  but  it 
was  certainly  not  likely  to  improve  it  and  Mr.  Van  Torp 
believed  that  if  his  partner  had  a  grudge  against  him, 
any  attempt  at  revenge  would  be  made  in  a  shape  that 
would  not  affect  the  Trust's  finances.  Bamberger  was  a 
resentful  sort  of  man,  but  on  the  other  hand  he  was  a 
man  of  business,  and  his  fortune  depended  on  that  of 
his  great  partner. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  walked  every  morning  in  the  park, 
thinking  over  these  things,  and  little  Ida  tripped  along 
beside  him  watching  the  squirrels  and  the  birds,  and 
not  saying  much;  but  now  and  then,  when  she  felt  the 
gentle  pressure  of  his  hand  on  hers,  which  usually  meant 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PRIMADONNA  257 

that  he  was  going  to  speak  to  her,  she  looked  up  to 
watch  his  lips,  and  they  did  not  move;  only  his  eyes 
met  hers,  and  the  faint  smile  that  came  into  his  face 
then  was  not  at  all  like  the  one  which  most  people  saw 
there.  So  she  smiled  back,  happily,  and  looked  at  the 
squirrels  again,  sure  that  a  rabbit  would  soon  make  a 
dash  over  the  open  and  cross  the  road,  and  hoping  for 
the  rare  delight  of  seeing  a  hare.  And  the  tame  red 
and  fallow  deer  looked  at  her  suspiciously  from  a  dis 
tance,  as  if  she  might  turn  into  a  motor-car.  In  those 
morning  walks  she  did  not  again  see  his  lips  forming 
words  that  frightened  her,  and  she  began  to  be  quite 
sure  that  he  had  stopped  swearing  to  himself  because 
she  had  spoken  to  him  so  seriously. 

Once  he  looked  at  her  so  long  and  with  so  much 
earnestness  that  she  asked  him  what  he  was  thinking 
of,  and  he  gently  pushed  back  the  broad-brimmed  hat 
she  wore,  so  as  to  see  her  forehead  and  beautiful  golden 
hair. 

'You  are  growing  very  like  your  mother/  he  said, 
after  a  little  while. 

They  had  stopped  in  the  broad  drive,  and  little  Ida 
gazed  gravely  up  at  him  for  a  moment.  Then  she  put 
up  her  arms. 

'I  think  I  want  to  give  you  a  kiss,  Mr.  Van  Torp/ 
she  said  with  the  utmost  gravity.  '  You're  so  good  to 
me.7 

Mr.  Van  Torp  stooped,  and  she  put  her  arms  round 
his  short  neck  and  kissed  the  hard,  flat  cheek  once,  and 
he  kissed  hers  rather  awkwardly. 


258  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XII 

1  Thank  you,  my  dear/  he  said,  in  an  odd  voice,  as  he 
straightened  himself. 

He  took  her  hand  again  to  walk  on,  and  the  great  iron 
mouth  was  drawn  a  little  to  one  side,  and  it  looked  as  if 
the  lips  might  have  trembled  if  they  had  not  been  so 
tightly  shut.  Perhaps  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  never  kissed 
a  child  before. 

She  was  very  happy  and  contented,  for  she  had  spent 
most  of  her  life  in  a  New  England  village  alone  with 
Miss  More,  and  the  great  English  country-house  was 
full  of  wonder  and  mystery  for  her,  and  the  park  was 
certainly  the  Earthly  Paradise.  She  had  hardly  ever 
been  with  other  children  and  was  rather  afraid  of  them, 
because  they  did  not  always  understand  what  she  said, 
as  most  grown  people  did;  so  she  was  not  at  all  lonely 
now.  On  the  contrary,  she  felt  that  her  small  existence 
was  ever  so  much  fuller  than  before,  since  she  now 
loved  two  people  instead  of  only  one,  and  the  two  people 
seemed  to  agree  so  well  together.  In  America  she  had 
only  seen  Mr.  Van  Torp  at  intervals,  when  he  had  ap 
peared  at  the  cottage  near  Boston,  the  bearer  of  toys 
and  chocolates  and  other  good  things,  and  she  had  not 
been  told  till  after  she  had  landed  in  Liverpool  that  she 
was  to  be  taken  to  stop  with  him  in  the  country  while 
he  remained  in  England.  Till  then  he  had  always 
called  her  'Miss  Ida/  in  an  absurdly  formal  way,  but 
ever  since  she  had  arrived  at  Oxley  Paddox  he  had 
dropped  the  'Miss/  and  had  never  failed  to  spend  two 
or  three  hours  alone  with  her  every  day.  Though  his 
manner  had  not  changed  much,  and  he  treated  her  with 


CHAP,  xii  THE  PRIMADONNA  259 

a  sort  of  queer  formality,  much  as  he  would  have  be 
haved  if  she  had  been  twenty  years  old  instead  of  nine, 
she  had  been  growing  more  and  more  sure  that  he 
loved  her  and  would  give  her  anything  in  the  world 
she  asked  for,  though  there  was  really  nothing  she 
wanted;  and  in  return  she  grew  gratefully  fond  of  him 
by  quick  degrees,  till  her  affection  expressed  itself  in 
her  solemn  proposal  to  'give  him  a  kiss.' 

Not  long  after  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  found  amongst  his 
letters  one  from  Lady  Maud,  of  which  the  envelope  was 
stamped  with  the  address  of  her  father's  country  place, 
'Craythew.'  He  read  the  contents  carefully,  and  made 
a  note  in  his  pocket-book  before  tearing  the  sheet  and 
the  envelope  into  a  number  of  small  bits. 

There  was  nothing  very  compromising  in  the  note, 
but  Mr.  Van  Torp  certainly  did  not  know  that  his 
butler  regularly  offered  first  and  second  prizes  in  the 
servants'  hall,  every  Saturday  night,  for  the  '  best-put- 
together  letters '  of  the  week  —  to  those  of  his  satellites, 
in  other  words,  who  had  been  most  successful  in  piecing 
together  scraps  from  the  master's  wastepaper  basket. 
In  houses  where  the  post-bag  has  a  patent  lock,  of  which 
the  master  keeps  the  key,  this  diversion  has  been  found 
a  good  substitute  for  the  more  thrilling  entertainment 
of  steaming  the  letters  and  reading  them  before  taking 
them  upstairs.  If  Mrs.  Dubbs  was  aware  of  Mr.  Crookes' 
weekly  distribution  of  rewards  she  took  no  notice  of  it; 
but  as  she  rarely  condescended  to  visit  the  lower  re 
gions,  and  only  occasionally  asked  Mr.  Crookes  to  dine 
in  her  own  sitting-room,  she  may  be  allowed  the  bene- 


260  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

fit  of  the  doubt;  and,  besides,  she  was  a  very  superior 
person. 

On  the  day  after  he  had  received  Lady  Maud's  note, 
Mr.  Van  Torp  rode  out  by  himself.  No  one,  judging 
from  his  looks,  would  have  taken  him  for  a  good  rider. 
He  rode  seldom,  too,  never  talked  of  horses,  and  was 
never  seen  at  a  race.  When  he  rode  he  did  not  even 
take  the  trouble  to  put  on  gaiters,  and,  after  he  had 
bought  Oxley  Paddox,  the  first  time  that  his  horse  was 
brought  to  the  door,  by  a  groom  who  had  never  seen  him, 
the  latter  could  have  sworn  that  the  millionaire  had 
never  been  on  a  horse  before  and  was  foolishly  deter 
mined  to  break  his  neck.  On  that  occasion  Mr.  Van 
Torp  came  down  the  steps,  with  a  big  cigar  in  his  mouth, 
in  his  ordinary  clothes,  without  so  much  as  a  pair  of 
straps  to  keep  his  trousers  down,  or  a  bit  of  a  stick  in 
his  hand.  The  animal  was  a  rather  ill-tempered  black 
that  had  arrived  from  Yorkshire  two  days  previously 
in  charge  of  a  boy  who  gave  him  a  bad  character.  As 
Mr.  Van  Torp  descended  the  steps  with  his  clumsy  gait, 
the  horse  laid  his  ears  well  back  for  a  moment  and 
looked  as  if  he  meant  to  kick  anything  within  reach. 
Mr.  Van  Torp  looked  at  him  in  a  dull  way,  puffed  his 
cigar,  and  made  one  remark  in  the  form  of  a  query. 

'He  ain't  a  lamb,  is  he?' 

'No,  sir/  answered  the  groom  with  sympathetic  alac 
rity,  'and  if  I  was  you,  sir,  I  wouldn't : 

But  the  groom's  good  advice  was  checked  by  an  un 
expected  phenomenon.  Mr.  Van  Torp  was  suddenly 
up,  and  the  black  was  plunging  wildly  as  was  only  to 


CHAP,  xii  THE   PRIMADONNA  261 

be  expected;  what  was  more  extraordinary  was  that 
Mr.  Van  Torp's  expression  showed  no  change  what 
ever,  the  very  big  cigar  was  stuck  in  his  mouth  at  pre 
cisely  the  same  angle  as  before,  and  he  appeared  to  be 
glued  to  the  saddle.  He  sat  perfectly  erect,  with  his 
legs  perpendicularly  straight,  and  his  hands  low  and 
quiet. 

The  next  moment  the  black  bolted  down  the  drive, 
but  Mr.  Van  Torp  did  not  seem  the  least  disturbed,  and 
the  astonished  groom,  his  mouth  wide  open  and  his 
arms  hanging  down,  saw  that  the  rider  gave  the  beast 
his  head  for  a  couple  of  hundred  yards,  and  then  actually 
stopped  him  short,  bringing  him  almost  to  the  ground 
on  his  haunches. 

'My  Gawd,  'e's  a  cowboy!'  exclaimed  the  groom, 
who  was  a  Cockney,  and  had  seen  a  Wild  West  show 
and  recognised  the  real  thing.  'And  me  thinkin'  'e 
was  goin'  to  break  his  precious  neck  and  wastin'  my 
bloomin'  sympathy  on  'im!' 

Since  that  first  day  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  not  ridden 
more  than  a  score  of  times  in  two  years.  He  preferred 
driving,  because  it  was  less  trouble,  and  partly  because 
he  could  take  little  Ida  with  him.  It  was  therefore 
always  a  noticeable  event  in  the  monotonous  existence 
at  Torp  Towers  when  he  ordered  a  horse  to  be  saddled, 
as  he  did  on  the  day  after  he  had  got  Lady  Maud's  note 
from  Craythew. 

He  rode  across  the  hilly  country  at  a  leisurely  pace, 
first  by  lanes  and  afterwards  over  a  broad  moor,  till  he 
entered  a  small  beech  wood  by  a  bridle-path  not  wide 


262  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

enough  for  two  to  ride  together,  and  lined  with  rho 
dodendrons,  lilacs,  and  laburnum.  A  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  the  entrance  a  pretty  glade  widened  to  an  open 
lawn,  in  the  middle  of  which  stood  a  ruin,  consisting  of 
the  choir  and  chancel  arch  of  a  chapel.  Mr.  Van  Torp 
drew  rein  before  it,  threw  his  right  leg  over  the  pommel 
before  him,  and  remained  sitting  sideways  on  the  saddle, 
for  the  very  good  reason  that  he  did  not  see  anything 
to  sit  on  if  he  got  down,  and  that  it  was  of  no  use  to 
waste  energy  in  standing.  His  horse  might  have  re 
sented  such  behaviour  on  the  part  of  any  one  else,  but 
accepted  the  western  rider's  eccentricities  quite  calmly 
and  proceeded  to  crop  the  damp  young  grass  at  his  feet. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  had  come  to  meet  Lady  Maud.  The 
place  was  lonely  and  conveniently  situated,  being  about 
half-way  between  Oxley  Paddox  and  Craythew,  on  Mr. 
Van  Torp's  land,  which  was  so  thoroughly  protected 
against  trespassers  and  reporters  by  wire  fences  and 
special  watchmen  that  there  was  little  danger  of  any 
one  getting  within  the  guarded  boundary.  On  the  side 
towards  Craythew  there  was  a  gate  with  a  patent  lock, 
to  which  Lady  Maud  had  a  key. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  was  at  the  meeting-place  at  least  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  before  the  appointed  time.  His 
horse  only  moved  a  short  step  every  now  and  then, 
eating  his  way  slowly  across  the  grass,  and  his  rider  sat 
sideways,  resting  his  elbows  on  his  knees  and  staring 
at  nothing  particular,  with  that  perfectly  wooden  ex 
pression  of  his  which  indicated  profound  thought. 

But  his  senses  were  acutely  awake,  and  he  caught  the 


CHAP.  XH  THE  PRIMADONNA  263 

distant  sound  of  hoofs  on  the  soft  woodland  path  just 
a  second  before  his  horse  lifted  his  head  and  pricked  his 
ears.  Mr.  Van  Torp  did  not  slip  to  the  ground,  how 
ever,  and  he  hardly  changed  his  position.  Half  a  dozen 
young  pheasants  hurled  themselves  noisily  out  of  the 
wood  on  the  other  side  of  the  ruin,  and  scattered  again 
as  they  saw  him,  to  perch  on  the  higher  boughs  of  the 
trees  not  far  off  instead  of  settling  on  the  sward.  A 
moment  later  Lady  Maud  appeared,  on  a  lanky  and 
elderly  thoroughbred  that  had  been  her  own  long  before 
her  marriage.  Her  old-fashioned  habit  was  evidently 
of  the  same  period  too;  it  had  been  made  before  the 
modern  age  of  skirted  coats,  and  fitted  her  figure  in  a 
way  that  would  have  excited  open  disapproval  and 
secret  admiration  in  Rotten  Row.  But  she  never  rode 
in  town,  so  that  it  did  not  matter;  and,  besides,  Lady 
Maud  did  not  care. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  raised  his  hat  in  a  very  un-English  way, 
and  at  the  same  time,  apparently  out  of  respect  for  his 
friend,  he  went  so  far  as  to  change  his  seat  a  little  by 
laying  his  right  knee  over  the  pommel  and  sticking  his 
left  foot  into  the  stirrup,  so  that  he  sat  like  a  woman. 
Lady  Maud  drew  up  on  his  off  side  and  they  shook 
hands. 

'You  look  rather  comfortable,7  she  said,  and  the 
happy  ripple  was  in  her  voice. 

'Why,  yes.  There's  nothing  else  to  sit  on,  and  the 
grass  is  wet.  Do  you  want  to  get  off?' 

'I  thought  we  might  make  some  tea  presently,'  an 
swered  Lady  Maud.  'I've  brought  my  basket.' 


264  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xil 

'Now  I  call  that  quite  sweet!'  Mr.  Van  Torp  seemed 
very  much  pleased,  and  he  looked  down  at  the  shabby 
little  brown  basket  hanging  at  her  saddle. 

He  slipped  to  the  ground,  and  she  did  the  same  before 
he  could  go  round  to  help  her.  The  old  thoroughbred 
nosed  her  hand  as  if  expecting  something  good,  and  she 
produced  a  lump  of  sugar  from  the  tea-basket  and  gave 
it  to  him. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  pulled  a  big  carrot  from  the  pocket  of 
his  tweed  jacket  and  let  his  horse  bite  it  off  by  inches. 
Then  he  took  the  basket  from  Lady  Maud  and  the  two 
went  towards  the  ruin. 

'We  can  sit  on  the  Earl/  said  Lady  Maud,  advancing 
towards  a  low  tomb  on  which  was  sculptured  a  recum 
bent  figure  in  armour.  'The  horses  won't  run  away 
from  such  nice  grass.' 

So  the  two  installed  themselves  on  each  side  of  the 
stone  knight's  armed  feet,  which  helped  to  support  the 
tea-basket,  and  Lady  Maud  took  out  her  spirit-lamp 
and  a  saucepan  that  just  held  two  cups,  and  a  tin  bottle 
full  of  water,  and  all  the  other  things,  arranging  them 
neatly  in  order. 

'How  practical  women  are!'  exclaimed  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
looking  on.  'Now  I  would  never  have  thought  of  that/ 

But  he  was  really  wondering  whether  she  expected 
him  to  speak  first  of  the  grave  matters  that  brought 
them  together  in  that  lonely  place. 

'I've  got  some  bread  and  butter/  she  said,  opening 
a  small  sandwich-box,  'and  there  is  a  lemon  instead  of 


cream.' 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PRIMADONNA  265 

'Your  arrangements  beat  Hare  Court  hollow/  ob 
served  the  millionaire.  '  Do  you  remember  the  cracked 
cups  and  the  weevilly  biscuits?' 

'Yes,  and  how  sorry  you  were  when  you  had  burnt 
the  little  beasts!  Now  light  the  spirit-lamp,  please, 
and  then  we  can  talk/ 

Everything  being  arranged  to  her  satisfaction,  Lady 
Maud  looked  up  at  her  companion. 

'Are  you  going  to  do  anything  about  it?7  she  asked. 

'Will  it  do  any  good  if  I  do?    That's  the  question/ 

'Good?  What  is  good  in  that  sense?'  She  looked 
at  him  a  moment,  but  as  he  did  not  answer  she  went  on. 
'I  cannot  bear  to  see  you  abused  in  print  like  this,  day 
after  day,  when  I  know  the  truth,  or  most  of  it/ 

'It  doesn't  matter  about  me.  I'm  used  to  it.  What 
does  your  father  say?' 

'He  says  that  when  a  man  is  attacked  as  you  are,  it's 
his  duty  to  defend  himself.' 

'Oh,  he  does,  does  he?' 

Lady  Maud  smiled,  but  shook  her  head  in  a  reproach 
ful  way. 

'You  promised  me  that  you  would  never  give  me  your 
business  answer,  you  know!' 

'I'm  sorry,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp,  in  a  tone  of  contrition. 
'Well,  you  see,  I  forgot  you  weren't  a  man.  I  won't 
do  it  again.  So  your  father  thinks  I'd  better  come  out 
flat-footed  with  a  statement  to  the  press.  Now,  I'll 
tell  you.  I'd  do  so,  if  I  didn't  feel  sure  that  all  this 
circus  about  me  isn't  the  real  thing  yet.  It's  been 
got  up  with  an  object,  and  until  I  can  make  out  what's 


266  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xil 

coming  I  think  I'd  best  keep  still.  Whoever's  at  the 
root  of  this  is  counting  on  my  losing  my  temper  and  hit 
ting  out,  and  saying  things,  and  then  the  real  attack 
will  come  from  an  unexpected  quarter.  Do  you  see 
that?  Under  the  circumstances,  almost  any  man  in 
my  position  would  get  interviewed  and  talk  back, 
wouldn't  he?' 

'I  fancy  so/  answered  Lady  Maud. 

'Exactly.  If  I  did  that,  I  might  be  raising  against 
another  man's  straight  flush,  don't  you  see?  A  good 
way  in  a  fight  is  never  to  do  what  everybody  else  would 
do.  But  I've  got  a  scheme  for  getting  behind  the  other 
man,  whoever  he  is,  and  I've  almost  concluded  to  try  it.' 

'Will  you  tell  me  what  it  is?' 

'Don't  I  always  tell  you  most  things?' 

Lady  Maud  smiled  at  the  reservation  implied  in 
'most.' 

'After  all  you  have  done  for  me,  I  should  have  no 
right  to  complain  if  you  never  told  me  anything,'  she 
answered.  'Do  as  you  think  best.  You  know  that 
I  trust  you.' 

'That's  right,  and  I  appreciate  it,'  answered  the 
millionaire.  'In  the  first  place,  you're  not  going  to  be 
divorced.  I  suppose  that's  settled.' 

Lady  Maud  opened  her  clear  eyes  in  surprise. 

'You  didn't  know  that,  did  you?'  asked  Mr.  Van 
Torp,  enjoying  her  astonishment. 

'Certainly  not,  and  I  can  hardly  believe  it/  she 
answered. 

'Look  here,  Maud/  said  her  companion,  bending  his 


CHAP,  xii  THE   PRIMADONNA  267 

heavy  brows  in  a  way  very  unusual  with  him,  'do  you 
seriously  think  I'd  let  you  be  divorced  on  my  account? 
That  I'd  allow  any  human  being  to  play  tricks  with 
your  good  name  by  coupling  it  with  mine  in  any  sort  of 
way?  If  I  were  the  kind  of  man  about  whom  you  had 
a  right  to  think  that,  I  wouldn't  deserve  your  friendship.' 

It  was  not  often  that  Rufus  Van  Torp  allowed  his 
face  to  show  feeling,  but  the  look  she  saw  in  his  rough- 
hewn  features  for  a  moment  almost  frightened  her. 
There  was  something  Titanic  in  it. 

'No,  Rufus  —  no!'  she  cried,  earnestly.  'You  know 
how  I  have  believed  in  you  and  trusted  you!  It's  only 
that  I  don't  see  how 

' That's  a  detail,'  answered  the  American.  'The 
"how"  don't  matter  when  a  man's  in  earnest.'  The 
look  was  gone  again,  for  her  words  had  appeased  him 
instantly.  'Well,'  he  went  on,  in  his  ordinary  tone, 
'you  can  take  it  for  granted  that  the  divorce  will  come 
to  nothing.  There'll  be  a  clear  statement  in  all  the  best 
papers  next  week,  saying  that  your  husband's  suit  for  a 
divorce  has  been  dismissed  with  costs  because  there  is 
not  the  slightest  evidence  of  any  kind  against  you.  It 
will  be  stated  that  you  came  to  my  partner's  chambers 
in  Hare  Court  on  a  matter  of  pure  business,  to  receive 
certain  money,  which  was  due  to  you  from  me  in  the 
way  of  business,  for  which  you  gave  me  the  usual  busi 
ness  acknowledgment.  So  that's  that!  I  had  a  wire 
yesterday  to  say  it's  as  good  as  settled.  The  water's 
boiling.' 

The  steam  was  lifting  the  lid  of  the  small  saucepan, 


268  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XH 

which  stood  securely  on  the  spirit-lamp  between  the 
marble  knight's  greaved  shins.  But  Lady  Maud  took 
no  notice  of  it. 

'It's  like  you/  said  she.  'I  cannot  find  anything 
else  to  say!' 

'It  doesn't  matter  about  saying  anything,'  returned 
Mr.  Van  Torp.  'The  water's  boiling.' 

'Will  you  blow  out  the  lamp?'  As  she  spoke  she 
dropped  a  battered  silver  tea-ball  into  the  water,  and 
moved  it  about  by  its  little  chain. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  took  off  his  hat,  and  bent  down  side 
ways  till  his  flat  cheek  rested  on  the  knight's  stone  shin, 
and  he  blew  out  the  flame  with  one  well-aimed  puff. 
Lady  Maud  did  not  look  at  the  top  of  his  head,  nor  steal 
a  furtive  glance  at  the  strong  muscles  and  sinews  of  his 
solid  neck.  She  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  She  bobbed 
the  tea-ball  up  and  down  in  the  saucepan  by  its  chain, 
and  watched  how  the  hot  water  turned  brown. 

'  But  I  did  not  give  you  a ' '  business  acknowledgment," 
as  you  call  it,'  she  said  thoughtfully.  'It's  not  quite 
truthful  to  say  I  did,  you  know.' 

'Does  that  bother  you?    All  right.' 

He  produced  his  well-worn  pocket-book,  found  a  scrap 
of  white  paper  amongst  the  contents,  and  laid  it  on  the 
leather.  Then  he  took  his  pencil  and  wrote  a  few  words. 

'Received  of  R.  Van  Torp  £4100  to  balance  of  account.' 

He  held  out  the  pencil,  and  laid  the  pocket-book  on 
his  palm  for  her  to  write.  She  read  the  words  with 
out  moving. 

'"To  balance  of  account"  — what  does  that  mean?' 


CHAP,  xii  THE  PRIMADONNA  269 

'It  means  that  it's  a  business  transaction.  At  the 
time  you  couldn't  make  any  further  claim  against  me. 
That's  all  it  means.' 

He  put  the  pencil  to  the  paper  again,  and  wrote  the 
date  of  the  meeting  hi  Hare  Court. 

'There!  If  you  sign  your  name  to  that,  it  just  means 
that  you  had  no  further  claim  against  me  on  that  day. 
You  hadn't,  anyway,  so  you  may  just  as  well  sign!' 

He  held  out  the  paper,  and  Lady  Maud  took  it  with 
a  smile  and  wrote  her  signature. 

1  Thank  you,'  said  Mr.  Van  Torp.  'Now  you're 
quite  comfortable,  I  suppose,  for  you  can't  deny  that 
you  have  given  me  the  usual  business  acknowledgment. 
The  other  part  of  it  is  that  I  don't  care  to  keep  that 
kind  of  receipt  long,  so  I  just  strike  a  match  and  burn 
it.'  He  did  so,  and  watched  the  flimsy  scrap  turn  black 
on  the  stone  knight's  knee,  till  the  gentle  breeze  blew 
the  ashes  away.  'So  there!'  he  concluded.  'If  you 
were  called  upon  to  swear  in  evidence  that  you  signed 
a  proper  receipt  for  the  money,  you  couldn't  deny  it, 
could  you?  A  receipt's  good  if  given  at  any  time 
after  the  money  has  been  paid.  What's  the  matter? 
Why  do  you  look  as  if  you  doubted  it?  What  is  truth, 
anyhow?  It's  the  agreement  of  the  facts  with  the  state 
ment  of  them,  isn't  it?  Well,  I  don't  see  but  the  state 
ment  coincides  with  the  facts  all  right  now.' 

While  he  had  been  talking  Lady  Maud  had  poured 
out  the  tea,  and  had  cut  some  thin  slices  from  the 
lemon,  glancing  at  him  incredulously  now  and  then, 
but  smiling  in  spite  of  herself. 


270  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

1  That's  all  sophistry/  she  said,  as  she  handed  him 
his  cup. 

'Thanks/  he  answered,  taking  it  from  her.  'Look 
here!  Can  you  deny  that  you  have  given  me  a  formal 
dated  receipt  for  four  thousand  one  hundred  pounds?7 


'Well,  then,  what  can't  be  denied  is  the  truth;  and  if 
I  choose  to  publish  the  truth  about  you,  I  don't  sup 
pose  you  can  find  fault  with  it.' 

'No,  but- 

'  Excuse  me  for  interrupting,  but  there  is  no  "but." 
What's  good  in  law  is  good  enough  for  me,  and  the 
Attorney-General  and  all  his  angels  couldn't  get  behind 
that  receipt  now,  if  they  tried  till  they  were  black  in 
the  face.' 

Mr.  Van  Torp's  similes  were  not  always  elegant. 

'Tip-  top  tea/  he  remarked,  as  Lady  Maud  did  not 
attempt  to  say  anything  more.  'That  was  a  bright 
idea  of  yours,  bringing  the  lemon,  too.' 

He  took  several  small  sips  in  quick  succession,  evi 
dently  appreciating  the  quality  of  the  tea  as  a  con 
noisseur. 

'I  don't  know  how  you  have  managed  to  do  it/  said 
Lady  Maud  at  last.  'As  you  say,  the  "how"  does  not 
matter  very  much.  Perhaps  it's  just  as  well  that  I 
should  not  know  how  you  got  at  the  Patriarch.  I 
couldn't  be  more  grateful  if  I  knew  the  whole  story.' 

'There's  no  particular  story  about  it.  When  I  found 
he  was  the  man  to  be  seen,  I  sent  a  man  to  see  him. 
That's  all.' 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PRIMADONNA  271 

'It  sounds  very  simple/  said  Lady  Maud,  whose 
acquaintance  with  American  slang  was  limited,  even 
after  she  had  known-  Mr.  Van  Torp  intimately  for  two 
years.  'You  were  going  to  tell  me  more.  You  said 
you  had  a  plan  for  catching  the  real  person  who  is  re 
sponsible  for  this  attack  on  you.' 

'Well,  I  have  a  sort  of  an  idea,  but  I'm  not  quite  sure 
how  the  land  lays.  By  the  bye,'  he  said  quickly,  cor 
recting  himself,  'isn't  that  one  of  the  things  I  say 
wrong?  You  told  me  I  ought  to  say  how  the  land 
"lies,"  didn't  you?  I  always  forget.' 

Lady  Maud  laughed  as  she  looked  at  him,  for  she  was 
quite  sure  that  he  had  only  taken  up  his  own  mistake 
in  order  to  turn  the  subject  from  the  plan  of  which  he 
did  not  mean  to  speak. 

'You  know  that  I'm  not  in  the  least  curious/  she 
said,  'so  don't  waste  any  cleverness  in  putting  me  off! 
I  only  wish  to  know  whether  I  can  help  you  to  carry 
out  your  plan.  I  had  an  idea  too.  I  thought  of  get 
ting  my  father  to  have  a  week-end  party  at  Craythew, 
to  which  you  would  be  asked,  by  way  of  showing  people 
that  he  knows  all  about  our  friendship,  and  approves 
of  it  in  spite  of  what  my  husband  has  been  trying  to  do. 
Would  that  suit  you?  Would  it  help  you  or  not?' 

'It  might  come  in  nicely  after  the  news  about  the 
divorce  appears/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp  approvingly. 
'It  would  be  just  the  same  if  I  went  over  to  dinner 
every  day,  and  didn't  sleep  in  the  house,  wouldn't  it?7 

'I'm  not  sure/  Lady  Maud  said.  'I  don't  think  it 
would,  quite.  It  might  seem  odd  that  you  should  dine 


272  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

with  us  every  day,  whereas  if  you  stop  with  us  people 
cannot  but  see  that  my  father  wants  you.' 

'How  about  Lady  Creedmore?' 

'My  mother  is  on  the  continent.  Why  in  the  world 
do  you  not  want  to  come? ' 

'Oh,  I  don't  know/  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp  vaguely. 
'Just  like  that,  I  suppose.  I  was  thinking.  But  it'll 
be  all  right,  and  I'll  come  any  way,  and  please  tell  your 
father  that  I  highly  appreciate  the  kind  invitation. 
When  is  it  to  be?' 

'Come  on  Thursday  next  week  and  stay  till  Tuesday. 
Then  you  will  be  there  when  the  first  people  come  and 
till  the  last  have  left.  That  will  look  even  better.' 

'Maybe  they'll  say  you  take  boarders/  observed  Mr. 
Van  Torp  facetiously.  'That  other  piece  belongs  to 
you.' 

While  talking  they  had  finished  their  tea,  and  only 
one  slice  of  bread  and  butter  was  left  in  the  sandwich- 
box. 

'No/  answered  Lady  Maud,  'it's  yours.  I  took  the 
first.' 

'Let's  go  shares/  suggested  the  millionaire. 

'There's  no  knife.' 

'Break  it.' 

Lady  Maud  doubled  the  slice  with  conscientious 
accuracy,  gently  pulled  the  pieces  apart  at  the  crease, 
and  held  out  one  half  to  her  companion.  He  took  it  as 
naturally  as  if  they  had  been  children,  and  they  ate 
their  respective  shares  in  silence.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Mr.  Van  Torp  had  been  unconsciously  and  instinctively 


CHAP,  xii  THE   PRIMADONNA  273 

more  interested  in  the  accuracy  of  the  division  than  in 
the  very  beautiful  white  fingers  that  performed  it. 

'Who  are  the  other  people  going  to  be?'  he  asked 
when  he  had  finished  eating,  and  Lady  Maud  was  be 
ginning  to  put  the  tea-things  back  into  the  basket. 

'That  depends  on  whom  we  can  get.  Everybody  is 
awfully  busy  just  now,  you  know.  The  usual  sort  of 
set,  I  suppose.  You  know  the  kind  of  people  who  come 
to  us  —  you've  met  lots  of  them.  I  thought  of  asking 
Miss  Donne  if  she  is  free.  You  know  her,  don't  you?' 

'Why,  yes,  I  do.  You've  read  those  articles  about 
our  interview  in  New  York,  I  suppose.' 

Lady  Maud,  who  had  been  extremely  occupied  with 
her  own  affairs  of  late,  had  almost  forgotten  the  story, 
and  was  now  afraid  that  she  had  made  a  mistake,  but 
she  caught  at  the  most  evident  means  of  setting  it 
right. 

'Yes,  of  course.  All  the  better,  if  you  are  seen  stop 
ping  in  the  same  house.  People  will  see  that  it's  all 
right.' 

'Well,  maybe  they  would.  I'd  rather,  if  it'll  do  her 
any  good.  But  perhaps  she  doesn't  want  to  meet  me. 
She  wasn't  over-anxious  to  talk  to  me  on  the  steamer, 
I  noticed,  and  I  didn't  bother  her  much.  She's  a  lovely 
woman!' 

Lady  Maud  looked  at  him,  and  her  beautiful  mouth 
twitched  as  if  she  wanted  to  laugh. 

'Miss  Donne  doesn't  think  you're  a  "lovely"  man  at 
all,'  she  said. 

'No,'  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp,  in  a  tone  of  child-like 


274  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

and  almost  sheepish  regret,  'she  doesn't,  and  I  suppose 
she's  right.  I  didn't  know  how  to  take  her,  or  she 
wouldn't  have  been  so  angry.' 

'When?  Did  you  really  ask  her  to  marry  you?' 
Lady  Maud  was  smiling  now. 

'Why,  yes,  I  did.  Why  shouldn't  I?  I  guess  it 
wasn't  very  well  done,  though,  and  I  was  a  fool  to  try 
and  take  her  hand  after  she'd  said  no.' 

'Oh,  you  tried  to  take  her  hand?' 

'Yes,  and  the  next  thing  I  knew  she'd  rushed  out  of 
the  room  and  bolted  the  door,  as  if  I  was  a  dangerous 
lunatic  and  she'd  just  found  it  out.  That's  what  hap 
pened  —  just  that.  It  wasn't  my  fault  if  I  was  in 
earnest,  I  suppose.' 

'And  just  after  that  you  were  engaged  to  poor  Miss 
Bamberger,'  said  Lady  Maud  in  a  tone  of  reflection. 

'Yes,'  answered  Mr.  Van  Torp  slowly.  'Nothing 
mattered  much  just  then,  and  the  engagement  was  the 
business  side.  I  told  you  about  all  that  in  Hare  Court.' 

'You're  a  singular  mixture  of  several  people  all  in 
one!  I  shall  never  quite  understand  you.' 

'Maybe  not.  But  if  you  don't,  nobody  else  is  likely 
to,  and  I  mean  to  be  frank  to  you  every  time.  I  sup 
pose  you  think  I'm  heartless.  Perhaps  I  am.  I  don't 
know.  You  have  to  know  about  the  business  side 
sometimes;  I  wish  you  didn't,  for  it's  not  the  side  of 
myself  I  like  best.' 

The  aggressive  blue  eyes  softened  a  little  as  he  spoke, 
and  there  was  a  touch  of  deep  regret  in  his  harsh  voice. 

'No,'  answered  Lady  Maud,  'I  don't  like  it  either. 


CHAP.  XII  THE   PRIMADONNA  275 

But  you  are  not  heartless.  Don't  say  that  of  yourself, 
please  —  please  don't!  You  cannot  fancy  how  it  would 
hurt  me  to  think  that  your  helping  me  was  only  a  rich 
man's  caprice,  that  because  a  few  thousand  pounds  are 
nothing  to  you  it  amused  you  to  throw  the  money  away 
on  me  and  my  ideas,  and  that  you  would  just  as  soon 
put  it  on  a  horse,  or  play  with  it  at  Monte  Carlo ! ' 

'Well,  you  needn't  worry,'  observed  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
smiling  in  a  reassuring  way.  'I'm  not  given  to  throw- 
big  away  money.  In  fact,  the  other  people  think  I'm 
too  much  inclined  to  take  it.  And  why  shouldn't  I? 
People  who  don't  know  how  to  take  care  of  money 
shouldn't  have  it.  They  do  harm  with  it.  It  is  right 
to  take  it  from  them  since  they  can't  keep  it  and  haven't 
the  sense  to  spend  it  properly.  However,  that's  the 
business  side  of  me,  and  we  won't  talk  about  it,  unless 
you  like.' 

'I  don't  "like"!'   Lady  Maud  smiled  too. 

'Precisely.  You're  not  the  business  side,  and  you 
can  have  anything  you  like  to  ask  for.  Anything  I've 
got,  I  mean.' 

The  beautiful  hands  were  packing  the  tea-things. 

'Anything  in  reason,'  suggested  Lady  Maud,  looking 
into  the  shabby  basket. 

'I'm  not  talking  about  reason/  answered  Mr.  Van 
Torp,  gouging  his  waistcoat  pockets  with  his  thick 
thumbs,  and  looking  at  the  top  of  her  old  grey  felt  hat 
as  she  bent  her  head.  'I  don't  suppose  I've  done  much 
good  in  my  life,  but  maybe  you'll  do  some  for  me, 
because  you  understand  those  things  and  I  don't.  Any- 


276  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xn 

how,  you  mean  to,  and  I  want  you  to,  and  that  consti 
tutes  intention  in  both  parties,  which  is  the  main  thing 
in  law.  If  it  happens  to  give  you  pleasure,  so  much  the 
better.  That's  why  I  say  you  can  have  anything  you 
like.  It's  an  unlimited  order.' 

'Thank  you,'  said  Lady  Maud,  still  busy  with  the 
things.  'I  know  you  are  in  earnest,  and  if  I  needed 
more  money  I  would  ask  for  it.  But  I  want  to  make 
sure  that  it  is  really  the  right  way  —  so  many  people 
would  not  think  it  was,  you  know,  and  only  time 
can  prove  that  I'm  not  mistaken.  There!'  She  had 
finished  packing  the  basket,  and  she  fastened  the  lid 
regretfully.  'I'm  afraid  we  must  be  going.  It  was 
awfully  good  of  you  to  come!' 

'Wasn't  it?  I'll  be  just  as  good  again  the  day  after 
to-morrow,  if  you'll  ask  me!' 

'Will  you?'  rippled  the  sweet  voice  pleasantly. 
'Then  come  at  the  same  time,  unless  it  rains  really 
hard.  I'm  not  afraid  of  a  shower,  you  know,  and  the 
arch  makes  a  very  fair  shelter  here.  I  never  catch  cold, 
either.' 

She  rose,  taking  up  the  basket  in  one  hand  and  shak 
ing  down  the  folds  of  her  old  habit  with  the  other. 

'All  the  same,  I'd  bring  a  jacket  next  time  if  I  were 
you,'  said  her  companion,  exactly  as  her  mother  might 
have  made  the  suggestion,  and  scarcely  bestowing  a 
glance  on  her  almost  too  visibly  perfect  figure. 

The  old  thoroughbred  raised  his  head  as  they  crossed 
the  sward,  and  made  two  or  three  steps  towards  her  of 
his  own  accord.  Her  foot  rested  a  moment  on  Mr. 


CHAP,  xii  THE   PRIMADONNA  277 

Van  Torp's  solid  hand,  and  she  was  in  the  saddle.  The 
black  was  at  first  less  disposed  to  be  docile,  but  soon 
yielded  at  the  sight  of  another  carrot.  Mr.  Van  Torp 
did  not  take  the  trouble  to  put  his  foot  into  the  stirrup, 
but  vaulted  from  the  ground  with  no  apparent  effort. 
Lady  Maud  smiled  approvingly,  but  not  as  a  woman 
who  loves  a  man  and  feels  pride  in  him  when  he  does 
anything  very  difficult.  It  merely  pleased  and  amused 
her  to  see  with  what  ease  and  indifference  the  rather 
heavily-built  American  did  a  thing  which  many  a  good 
English  rider,  gentleman  or  groom,  would  have  found 
it  hard  to  do  at  all.  But  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  ridden  and 
driven  cattle  in  California  for  his  living  before  he  had 
been  twenty. 

He  wheeled  and  came  to  her  side,  and  held  out  his 
hand. 

'Day  after  to-morrow,  at  the  same  time/  he  said  as 
she  took  it.  ' Good-bye!' 

'Good-bye,  and  don't  forget  Thursday!' 

They  parted  and  rode  away  in  opposite  directions, 
and  neither  turned,  even  once,  to  look  back  at  the  other. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  Elisir  d'Amore  was  received  with  enthusiasm,  but 
the  tenor  had  it  all  his  own  way,  as  Lushington  had 
foretold,  and  when  Pompeo  Stromboli  sang  l  Una  furtiva 
lacrima'  the  incomparable  Cordova  was  for  once  eclipsed 
in  the  eyes  of  a  hitherto  faithful  public.  Covent  Garden 
surrendered  unconditionally.  Metaphorically  speaking, 
it  rolled  over  on  its  back,  with  its  four  paws  in  the  air, 
like  a  small  dog  that  has  got  the  worst  of  a  fight  and 
throws  himself  on  the  bigger  dog's  mercy. 

Margaret  was  applauded,  but  as  a  matter  of  course. 
There  was  no  electric  thrill  in  the  clapping  of  hands; 
she  got  the  formal  applause  which  is  regularly  given  to 
the  sovereign,  but  not  the  enthusiasm  which  is  bestowed 
spontaneously  on  the  conqueror.  When  she  buttered 
her  face  and  got  the  paint  off,  she  was  a  little  pale,  and 
her  eyes  were  not  kind.  It  was  the  first  time  that  she 
had  not  carried  everything  before  her  since  she  had 
begun  her  astonishing  career,  and  in  her  first  disappoint 
ment  she  had  not  philosophy  enough  to  console  herself 
with  the  consideration  that  it  would  have  been  infinitely 
worse  to  be  thrown  into  the  shade  by  another  lyric 
soprano,  instead  of  by  the  most  popular  lyric  tenor 
on  the  stage.  She  was  also  uncomfortably  aware  that 
Lushington  had  predicted  what  had  happened,  and  she 

278 


CHAP,  xiii  THE  PRIMADONNA  279 

was  informed  that  he  had  not  even  taken  the  trouble  to 
come  to  the  first  performance  of  the  opera.  Logotheti, 
who  knew  everything  about  his  old  rival,  had  told  her 
that  Lushington  was  in  Paris  that  week,  and  was  going 
on  to  see  his  mother  in  Provence. 

The  Primadonna  was  put  out  with  herself  and  with 
everybody,  after  the  manner  of  great  artists  when  a  per 
formance  has  not  gone  exactly  as  they  had  hoped.  The 
critics  said  the  next  morning  that  the  Senorita  da  Cor 
dova  had  been  in  good  voice  and  had  sung  with  excellent 
taste  and  judgment,  but  that  was  all:  as  if  any  decent 
soprano  might  not  do  as  well!  They  wrote  as  if  she 
might  have  been  expected  to  show  neither  judgment 
nor  taste,  and  as  if  she  were  threatened  with  a  cold. 
Then  they  went  on  to  praise  Pompeo  Stromboli  with 
the  very  words  they  usually  applied  to  her.  His  voice 
was  full,  rich,  tender,  vibrating,  flexible,  soft,  powerful, 
stirring,  natural,  cultivated,  superb,  phenomenal,  and 
perfectly  fresh.  The  critics  had  a  severe  attack  of 
'adjectivitis.' 

Paul  Griggs  had  first  applied  the  name  to  that  inflam 
mation  of  language  to  which  many  young  writers  are 
subject  when  cutting  their  literary  milk-teeth,  and  from 
which  musical  critics  are  never  quite  immune.  Mar 
garet  could  no  longer  help  reading  what  was  written 
about  her;  that  was  one  of  the  signs  of  the  change  that 
had  come  over  her,  and  she  disliked  it,  and  sometimes 
despised  herself  for  it,  though  she  was  quite  unable  to 
resist  the  impulse.  The  appetite  for  flattery  which  comes 
of  living  on  it  may  be  innocent,  but  it  is  never  harmless. 


280  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiil 

Dante  consigned  the  flatterers  to  Inferno,  and  more  par 
ticularly  to  a  very  nasty  place  there:  it  is  true  that  there 
were  no  musical  critics  in  his  day;  but  he  does  not  say 
much  about  the  flattered,  perhaps  because  they  suffer 
enough  when  they  find  out  the  truth,  or  lose  the  gift 
for  which  they  have  been  over-praised. 

The  Primadonna  was  in  a  detestably  uncomfortable 
state  of  mind  on  the  day  after  the  performance  of  the 
revived  opera.  Her  dual  nature  was  hopelessly  mixed; 
Cordova  was  in  a  rage  with  Stromboli,  Schreiermeyer, 
Baci-Roventi,  and  the  whole  company,  not  to  mention 
Signor  Bambinelli  the  conductor,  the  whole  orchestra, 
and  the  dead  composer  of  the  Elisir  d'Amore;  but  Mar 
garet  Donne  was  ashamed  of  herself  for  caring,  and  for 
being  spoilt,  and  for  bearing  poor  Lushington  a  grudge 
because  he  had  foretold  a  result  that  was  only  to  be 
expected  with  such  a  tenor  as  Stromboli;  she  despised 
herself  for  wickedly  wishing  that  the  latter  had  cracked 
on  the  final  high  note  and  had  made  himself  ridiculous. 
But  he  had  not  cracked  at  all;  in  imagination  she  could 
hear  the  note  still,  tremendous,  round,  and  persistently 
drawn  out,  as  if  it  came  out  of  a  tenor  trombone  and  had 
all  the  world's  lungs  behind  it. 

In  her  mortification  Cordova  wras  ready  to  give  up 
lyric  opera  and  study  Wagner,  in  order  to  annihilate 
Pompeo  Stromboli,  who  did  not  even  venture  Lohengrin. 
Schreiermeyer  had  unkindly  told  him  that  if  he  arrayed 
his  figure  in  polished  armour  he  would  look  like  a  silver 
teapot;  and  Stromboli  was  very  sensitive  to  ridicule. 
Even  if  he  had  possessed  a  dramatic  voice,  he  could 


CHAP,  xiil  THE   PRIMADONNA  281 

never  have  bounded  about  the  stage  in  pink  tights  and 
the  exiguous  skin  of  an  unknown  wild  animal  as  Siegfried, 
and  in  the  flower  scene  of  Parsifal  he  would  have  looked 
like  Falstaff  in  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  But  Cor 
dova  could  have  made  herself  into  a  stately  Brunhilde, 
a  wild  and  lovely  Kundry,  or  a  fab*  and  fateful  Isolde, 
with  the  very  least  amount  of  artificial  aid  that  theatrical 
illusion  admits. 

Margaret  Donne,  disgusted  with  Cordova,  said  that 
her  voice  was  about  as  well  adapted  for  one  of  those 
parts  as  a  sick  girl's  might  be  for  giving  orders  at  sea  in 
a  storm.  Cordova  could  not  deny  this,  and  fell  back 
upon  the  idea  of  having  an  opera  written  for  her,  ex 
pressly  to  show  off  her  voice,  with  a  crescendo  trill  in 
every  scene  and  a  high  D  at  the  end;  and  Margaret 
Donne,  who  loved  music  for  its  own  sake,  was  more  dis 
gusted  than  ever,  and  took  up  a  book  in  order  to  get 
rid  of  her  professional  self,  and  tried  so  hard  to  read  that 
she  almost  gave  herself  a  headache. 

Pompeo  Stromboli  was  really  the  most  sweet-tem 
pered  creature  in  the  world,  and  called  during  the  after 
noon  with  the  idea  of  apologising  for  having  eclipsed 
her,  but  was  told  that  she  was  resting  and  would  see 
no  one.  Fraulein  Ottilie  Braun  also  came,  and  Mar 
garet  would  probably  have  seen  her,  but  had  not  given 
any  special  orders,  so  the  kindly  little  person  trotted  off, 
and  Margaret  knew  nothing  of  her  coming;  and  the  day 
wore  on  quickly;  and  when  she  wanted  to  go  out,  it  at 
once  began  to  rain  furiously;  and,  at  last,  in  sheer 
impatience  at  everything,  she  telephoned  to  Logotheti, 


282  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

asking  him  to  come  and  dine  alone  with  her  if  he  felt 
that  he  could  put  up  with  her  temper,  which,  she  ex 
plained,  was  atrocious.  She  heard  the  Greek  laugh 
gaily  at  the  other  end  of  the  wire. 

'Will  you  come?'  she  asked,  impatient  that  anybody 
should  be  in  a  good  humour  when  she  was  not. 

Til  come  now,  if  you'll  let  me/  he  answered  readily. 

'No.  Come  to  dinner  at  half-past  eight.'  She  waited 
a  moment  and  then  went  on.  'I've  sent  down  word 
that  I'm  not  at  home  for  any  one,  and  I  don't  like  to 
make  you  the  only  exception/ 

'Oh,  I  see,'  answered  Logotheti's  voice.  'But  I've 
always  wanted  to  be  the  only  exception.  I  say,  does 
half-past  eight  mean  a  quarter  past  nine?' 

'No.  It  means  a  quarter  past  eight,  if  you  like. 
Good-bye!' 

She  cut  off  the  communication  abruptly,  being  a  little 
afraid  that  if  she  let  him  go  on  chattering  any  longer  she 
might  yield  and  allow  him  to  come  at  once.  In  her 
solitude  she  was  intensely  bored  by  her  own  bad  temper, 
and  was  nearer  to  making  him  the  'only  exception'  than 
she  had  often  been  of  late.  She  said  to  herself  that  he 
always  amused  her,  but  in  her  heart  she  was  conscious 
that  he  was  the  only  man  in  the  world  who  knew  how 
to  flatter  her  back  into  a  good  temper,  and  would  take 
the  trouble  to  do  so.  It  was  better  than  nothing  to  look 
forward  to  a  pleasant  evening,  and  she  went  back  to  her 
novel  and  her  cup  of  tea  already  half  reconciled  with 
life. 

It   rained   almost   without   stopping.    At   times   it 


CHAP,  xill  THE   PRIMADONNA  283 

poured,  which  really  does  not  happen  often  in  much- 
abused  London;  but  even  heavy  rain  is  not  so  depressing 
in  spring  as  it  is  in  winter,  and  when  the  Primadonna 
raised  her  eyes  from  her  book  and  looked  out  of  the  big 
window,  she  was  not  thinking  of  the  dreariness  outside 
but  of  what  she  should  wear  in  the  evening.  To  tell 
the  truth,  she  did  not  often  trouble  herself  much  about 
that  matter  when  she  was  not  going  to  sing,  and  all 
singers  and  actresses  who  habitually  play  '  costume 
parts7  are  conscious  of  looking  upon  stage-dressing  and 
ordinary  dressing  from  totally  different  points  of  view. 
By  far  the  larger  number  of  them  have  their  stage  clothes 
made  by  a  theatrical  tailor,  and  only  an  occasional 
eccentric  celebrity  goes  to  Worth  or  Doucet  to  be  dressed 
for  a  'Juliet/  a  'Tosca,'  or  a  'Dona  Sol.' 

Margaret  looked  at  the  rain  and  decided  that  Logo- 
theti  should  not  find  her  in  a  tea-gown,  not  because  it 
would  look  too  intimate,  but  because  tea-gowns  suggest 
weariness,  the  state  of  being  misunderstood,  and  a  crav 
ing  for  sympathy.  A  woman  who  is  going  to  surrender 
to  fate  puts  on  a  tea-gown,  but  a  well-fitting  body  indi 
cates  strength  of  character  and  virtuous  firmness. 

I  remember  a  smart  elderly  Frenchwoman  who  always 
bestowed  unusual  care  on  every  detail  of  her  dress, 
visible  and  invisible,  before  going  to  church.  Her  niece 
was  in  the  room  one  Sunday  while  she  was  dressing  for 
church,  and  asked  why  she  took  so  much  trouble. 

'My  dear/  was  the  answer,  'Satan  is  everywhere,  and 
one  can  never  know  what  may  happen.' 

Margaret  was  very  fond  of  warm  greys,  and  fawn 


284  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

tints,  and  dove  colour,  and  she  had  lately  got  a  very 
pretty  dress  that  was  exactly  to  her  taste,  and  was 
made  of  a  newly  invented  thin  material  of  pure  silk, 
which  had  no  sheen  and  cast  no  reflections  of  light,  and 
was  slightly  elastic,  so  that  it  fitted  as  no  ordinary  silk 
or  velvet  ever  could.  Alphonsine  called  the  gown  a 
' legend,'  but  a  celebrated  painter  who  had  lately  seen 
it  said  it  was  an  '  Indian  twilight/  which  might  mean 
anything,  as  Paul  Griggs  explained,  because  there  is  no 
twilight  to  speak  of  in  India.  The  dress-maker  who 
had  made  it  called  the  colour  '  fawn's  stomach/  which 
was  less  poetical,  and  the  fabric,  'veil  of  nun  in  love/ 
which  showed  little  respect  for  monastic  institutions. 
As  for  the  way  in  which  the  dress  was  made,  it  is  folly 
to  rush  into  competition  with  tailors  and  dressmakers, 
who  know  what  they  are  talking  about,  and  are  able  to 
say  things  which  nobody  can  understand. 

The  plain  fact  is  that  the  Primadonna  began  to  dress 
early,  out  of  sheer  boredom,  had  her  thick  brown  hair 
done  in  the  most  becoming  way  in  spite  of  its  natural 
waves,  which  happened  to  be  unfashionable  just  then, 
and  she  put  on  the  new  gown  with  all  the  care  and  con 
sideration  which  so  noble  a  creation  deserved. 

'Madame  is  adorable/  observed  Alphonsine.  'Ma 
dame  is  a  dream.  Madame  has  only  to  lift  her  little 
finger,  and  kings  will  fall  into  ecstasy  before  her.' 

'That  would  be  very  amusing/  said  Margaret,  look 
ing  at  herself  in  the  glass,  and  less  angry  with  the 
world  than  she  had  been.  'I  have  never  seen  a  king  in 
ecstasy.' 


CHAP,  xin  THE   PRIMADONNA  285 

'The  fault  is  Madame's,'  returned  Alphonsine,  possibly 
with  truth. 

When  Margaret  went  into  the  drawing-room  Logo- 
theti  was  already  there,  and  she  felt  a  thrill  of  pleasure 
when  his  expression  changed  at  sight  of  her.  It  is  not 
easy  to  affect  the  pleased  surprise  which  the  sudden 
appearance  of  something  beautiful  brings  into  the  face 
of  a  man  who  is  not  expecting  anything  unusual. 

'Oh,  I  say!'  exclaimed  the  Greek.  'Let  me  look  at 
you!' 

And  instead  of  coming  forward  to  take  her  hand,  he 
stepped  back  in  order  not  to  lose  anything  of  the  wonder 
ful  effect  by  being  too  near.  Margaret  stood  still  and 
smiled  in  the  peculiar  way  which  is  a  woman's  equivalent 
for  a  cat's  purring.  Then,  to  Logotheti's  still  greater 
delight,  she  slowly  turned  herself  round,  to  be  admired, 
like  a  statue  on  a  pivoted  pedestal,  quite  regardless  of  a 
secret  consciousness  that  Margaret  Donne  would  not 
have  done  such  a  thing  for  him,  and  probably  not  for 
any  other  man. 

'You're  really  too  utterly  stunning!'  he  cried. 

In  moments  of  enthusiasm  he  sometimes  out-Englished 
Englishmen. 

'I'm  glad  you  like  it,'  Margaret  said.  'This  is  the 
first  time  I've  worn  it.' 

'If  you  put  it  on  for  me,  thank  you!  If  not,  thank 
you  for  putting  it  on !  I'm  not  asking,  either.  I  should 
think  you  would  wear  it  if  you  were  alone  for  the  mere 
pleasure  of  feeling  like  a  goddess.' 

'You're  very  nice!7 


286  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

She  was  satisfied,  and  for  a  moment  she  forgot  Pompeo 
Stromboli,  the  Elisir  d'Amore,  the  public,  and  the  critics. 
It  was  particularly  'nice'  of  him,  too,  not  to  insist  upon 
being  told  that  she  had  put  on  the  new  creation  solely 
for  his  benefit.  Next  to  not  assuming  rashly  that  a 
woman  means  anything  of  the  sort  expressly  for  him, 
it  is  wise  of  a  man  to  know  when  she  really  does,  without 
being  told.  At  least,  so  Margaret  thought  just  then; 
but  it  is  true  that  she  wanted  him  to  amuse  her  and  was 
willing  to  be  pleased. 

She  executed  the  graceful  swaying  movement  which 
only  a  well-made  woman  can  make  just  before  sitting 
down  for  the  first  time  in  a  perfectly  new  gown.  It  is  a 
slightly  serpentine  motion;  and  as  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  Eve  did  not  meet  the  Serpent  again  after  she 
had  taken  to  clothes,  she  may  have  learnt  the  trick  from 
him.  There  is  certainly  something  diabolical  about  it 
when  it  is  well  done. 

Logotheti's  almond-shaped  eyes  watched  her  quietly, 
and  he  stood  motionless  till  she  was  established  on  her 
chair.  Then  he  seated  himself  at  a  little  distance. 

'I  hope  I  was  not  rude/  he  said,  in  artful  apology, 
'but  it's  not  often  that  one's  breath  is  taken  away  by 
what  one  sees.  Horrid  weather  all  day,  wasn't  it? 
Have  you  been  out  at  all?' 

'No.  I've  been  moping.  I  told  you  that  I  was  in  a 
bad  humour,  but  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  it  now  that 
I  feel  better.  What  have  you  been  doing?  Tell  me  all 
sorts  of  amusing  things,  where  you  have  been,  whom 
you  have  seen,  and  what  people  said  to  you/ 


CHAP,  xiii  THE   PRIMADONNA  287 

'That  might  be  rather  dull/  observed  the  Greek. 

'I  don't  believe  it.  You  are  always  in  the  thick  of 
everything  that's  happening.' 

'We  have  agreed  to-day  to  lend  Russia  some  more 
money.  But  that  doesn't  interest  you,  does  it?  There's 
to  be  a  European  conference  about  the  Malay  pirates, 
but  there's  nothing  very  funny  in  that.  It  would  be 
more  amusing  to  hear  the  pirates'  view  of  Europeans. 
Let  me  see.  Some  one  has  discovered  a  conspiracy  in 
Italy  against  Austria,  and  there  is  another  in  Austria 
against  the  Italians.  They  are  the  same  old  plots  that 
were  discovered  six  months  ago,  but  people  had  for 
gotten  about  them,  so  they  are  as  good  as  new.  Then 
there  is  the  sad  case  of  that  Greek.' 

'What  Greek?  I've  not  heard  about  that.  What 
has  happened  to  him?' 

'  Oh,  nothing  much.  It's  only  a  love-story  —  the 
same  old  thing.' 

'Tell  me.' 

'Not  now,  for  we  shall  have  to  go  to  dinner  just  when 
I  get  to  the  most  thrilling  part  of  it,  I'm  sure.'  Logo- 
theti  laughed.  'And  besides,'  he  added,  'the  man  isn't 
dead  yet,  though  he's  not  expected  to  live.  I'll  tell  you 
about  your  friend  Mr.  Feist  instead.  He  has  been  very 
ill  too.' 

'I  would  much  rather  know  about  the  Greek  love- 
story,'  Margaret  objected.  'I  never  heard  of  Mr.  Feist/ 

She  had  quite  forgotten  the  man's  existence,  but 
Logotheti  recalled  to  her  memory  the  circumstances 
under  which  they  had  met,  and  Feist's  unhealthy  face 


THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XIH 

with  its  absurdly  youthful  look,  and  what  he  had  said 
about  having  been  at  the  Opera  in  New  York  on  the 
night  of  the  explosion. 

'Why  do  you  tell  me  all  this?'  Margaret  asked.  'He 
was  a  disgusting-looking  man,  and  I  never  wish  to  see 
him  again.  Tell  me  about  the  Greek.  When  we  go  to 
dinner  you  can  finish  the  story  in  French.  We  spoke 
French  the  first  time  we  met,  at  Madame  Bonanni's. 
Do  you  remember?' 

'Yes,  of  course  I  do.  But  I  was  telling  you  about 
Mr.  Feist  - 

'Dinner  is  ready,'  Margaret  said,  rising  as  the  ser 
vant  opened  the  door. 

To  her  surprise  the  man  came  forward.  He  said  that 
just  as  he  was  going  to  announce  dinner  Countess  Leven 
had  telephoned  that  she  was  dining  out,  and  would  after 
wards  stop  on  her  way  to  the  play  in  the  hope  of  seeing 
Margaret  for  a  moment.  She  had  seemed  to  be  in  a 
hurry,  and  had  closed  the  communication  before  the 
butler  could  answer.  And  dinner  was  served,  he  added. 

Margaret  nodded  carelessly,  and  the  two  went  into 
the  dining-room.  Lady  Maud  could  not  possibly  come 
before  half-past  nine,  and  there  was  plenty  of  time  to 
decide  whether  she  should  be  admitted  or  not. 

'Mr.  Feist  has  been  very  ill/  Logotheti  said  as  they 
sat  down  to  table  under  the  pleasant  light,  'and  I  have 
been  taking  care  of  him,  after  a  fashion.' 

Margaret  raised  her  eyebrows  a  little,  for  she  was 
beginning  to  be  annoyed  at  his  persistency,  and  was 
not  much  pleased  at  the  prospect  of  Lady  Maud's  visit. 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  289 

'How  very  odd!'  she  said,  rather  coldly.  'I  cannot 
imagine  anything  more  disagreeable.' 

'It  has  been  very  unpleasant/  Logo  the  ti  answered, 
'but  he  seemed  to  have  no  particular  friends  here,  and 
he  was  all  alone  at  an  hotel,  and  really  very  ill.  So  I 
volunteered.' 

'I've  no  objection  to  being  moderately  sorry  for  a 
young  man  who  falls  ill  at  an  hotel  and  has  no  friends,' 
Margaret  said,  'but  are  you  going  in  for  nursing?  Is 
that  your  latest  hobby?  It's  a  long  way  from  art,  and 
even  from  finance!' 

'Isn't  it?' 

'  Yes.     I'm  beginning  to  be  curious ! ' 

'I  thought  you  would  be  before  long/  Logo  the  ti 
answered  coolly,  but  suddenly  speaking  French.  'One 
of  the  most  delightful  things  in  life  is  to  have  one's 
curiosity  roused  and  then  satisfied  by  very  slow  degrees ! ' 

'Not  too  slow,  please.  The  interest  might  not  last 
to  the  end.' 

'Oh  yes,  it  will,  for  Mr.  Feist  plays  a  part  in  your 
life.' 

'About  as  distant  as  Voltaire's  Chinese  Mandarin,  I 
fancy/  Margaret  suggested. 

'Nearer  than  that,  though  I  did  not  guess  it  when  I 
went  to  see  him.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  owing  to  you 
that  I  went  to  see  him  the  first  time.' 

'Nonsense!' 

'Not  at  all.  Everything  that  happens  to  me  is  con 
nected  with  you  in  some  way.  I  came  to  see  you  late 
in  the  afternoon,  on  one  of  your  off-days  not  long  ago, 


290  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

hoping  that  you  would  ask  me  to  dine,  but  you  were 
across  the  river  at  Lord  Creedmore's.  I  met  old  Griggs 
at  your  door,  and  as  we  walked  away  he  told  me  that 
Mr.  Feist  had  fallen  down  in  a  fit  at  a  club,  the  night 
before,  and  had  been  sent  home  in  a  cab  to  the  Carl  ton. 
As  I  had  nothing  to  do,  worth  doing,  I  went  to  see  him. 
If  you  had  been  at  home,  I  should  never  have  gone. 
That  is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  you  were  the  cause 
of  my  going  to  see  him.' 

'In  the  same  way,  if  you  had  been  killed  by  a  motor 
car  as  you  went  away  from  my  door,  I  should  have  been 
the  cause  of  your  death!' 

'You  will  be  in  any  case/  laughed  Logo  the  ti,  'but 
that's  a  detail!  I  found  Mr.  Feist  in  a  very  bad  way.' 

'What  was  the  matter  with  him?'  asked  Margaret. 

'He  was  committing  suicide,'  answered  the  Greek  with 
the  utmost  calm.  'If  I  were  in  Constantinople  I  should 
tell  you  that  this  turbot  is  extremely  good,  but  as  we 
are  in  London  I  suppose  it  would  be  very  bad  manners 
to  say  so,  wouldn't  it?  So  I  am  thinking  it.' 

'Take  the  fish  for  granted,  and  tell  me  more  about 
Mr.  Feist!' 

'I  found  him  standing  before  the  glass  with  a  razor 
in  his  hand  and  quite  near  his  throat.  When  he  saw  me 
he  tried  to  laugh  and  said  he  was  just  going  to  shave;  I 
asked  him  if  he  generally  shaved  without  soap  and  water, 
and  he  burst  into  tears.' 

'That's  rather  dreadful/  observed  Margaret.  'What 
did  you  do?' 

'I  saved  his  life,  but  I  don't  think  he's  very  grateful 


CHAP,  xin  THE   PRIMADONNA  291 

yet.  Perhaps  he  may  be  by  and  by.  When  he  stopped 
sobbing  he  tried  to  kiH  me  for  hindering  his  destruction, 
but  I  had  got  the  razor  in  my  pocket,  and  his  revolver 
missed  fire.  That  was  lucky,  for  he  managed  to  stick 
the  muzzle  against  my  chest  and  pull  the  trigger  just 
as  I  got  him  down.  I  wished  I  had  brought  old  Griggs 
with  me,  for  they  say  he  can  bend  a  good  horse-shoe 
double,  even  now,  and  the  fellow  had  the  strength  of  a 
lunatic  in  him.  It  was  rather  lively  for  a  few  seconds, 
and  then  he  broke  down  again,  and  was  as  limp  as  a  rag, 
and  trembled  with  fright,  as  if  he  saw  queer  things  in  the 
room. ' 

'You  sent  for  a  doctor  then?' 

1  My  own,  and  we  took  care  of  him  together  that  night. 
You  may  laugh  at  the  idea  of  my  having  a  doctor,  as 
I  never  was  ill  in  my  life.  I  have  him  to  dine  with  me 
now  and  then,  because  he  is  such  good  company,  and  is 
the  best  judge  of  a  statue  or  a  picture  I  know.  The 
habit  of  taking  the  human  body  to  pieces  teaches  you 
a  great  deal  about  the  shape  of  it,  you  see.  In  the  morn 
ing  we  moved  Mr.  Feist  from  the  hotel  to  a  small  private 
hospital  where  cases  of  that  sort  are  treated.  Of  course 
he  was  perfectly  helpless,  so  we  packed  his  belongings 
and  papers.' 

'It  was  really  very  kind  of  you  to  act  the  Good  Sa 
maritan  to  a  stranger/  Margaret  said,  but  her  tone 
showed  that  she  was  disappointed  at  the  tame  ending 
of  the  story. 

'No,'  Logotheti  answered.  'I  was  never  consciously 
kind,  as  you  call  it.  It's  not  a  Greek  characteristic  to 


292  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xill 

love  one's  neighbour  as  one's  self.  Teutons,  Anglo- 
Saxons,  Latins,  and,  most  of  all,  Asiatics,  are  charitable, 
but  the  old  Greeks  were  not.  I  don't  believe  you'll  find 
an  instance  of  a  charitable  act  in  all  Greek  history, 
drama,  and  biography!  If  you  did  find  one  I  should 
only  say  that  the  exception  proves  the  rule.  Charity 
was  left  out  of  us  at  the  beginning,  and  we  never  could 
understand  it,  except  as  a  foreign  sentiment  imported 
with  Christianity  from  Asia.  We  have  had  every  other 
virtue,  including  hospitality.  In  the  Iliad  a  man  de 
clines  to  kill  his  enemy  on  the  ground  that  their  people 
had  dined  together,  which  is  going  rather  far,  but  it  is 
not  recorded  that  any  ancient  Greek,  even  Socrates 
himself,  ever  felt  pity  or  did  an  act  of  spontaneous  kind 
ness!  I  don't  believe  any  one  has  said  that,  but  it's 
perfectly  true.' 

'Then  why  did  you  take  all  that  trouble  for  Mr.  Feist?7 

'I  don't  know.  People  who  always  know  why  they 
do  things  are  great  bores.  It  was  probably  a  caprice 
that  took  me  to  see  him,  and  then  it  did  not  occur  to 
me  to  let  him  cut  his  throat,  so  I  took  away  his  razor; 
and,  finally,  I  telephoned  for  my  doctor,  because  my 
misspent  life  has  brought  me  into  contact  with  Western 
civilisation.  But  when  we  began  to  pack  Mr.  Feist's 
papers  I  became  interested  in  him.' 

'Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  read  his  letters?'  Mar 
garet  inquired. 

'Why  not?  If  I  had  let  him  kill  himself,  somebody 
would  have  read  them,  as  he  had  not  taken  the  trouble 
to  destroy  them!' 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  293 

'That's  a  singular  point  of  view.7 

'  So  was  Mr.  Feist's,  as  it  turned  out.  I  found  enough 
to  convince  me  that  he  is  the  writer  of  all  those  articles 
about  Van  Torp,  including  the  ones  in  which  you  are 
mentioned.  The  odd  thing  about  it  is  that  I  found  a 
very  friendly  invitation  from  Van  Torp  himself,  begging 
Mr.  Feist  to  go  down  to  Derbyshire  and  stop  a  week 
with  him.' 

Margaret  leaned  back  in  her  chair  and  looked  at  her 
guest  in  quiet  surprise. 

'What  does  that  mean?'  she  asked.  'Is  it  possible 
that  Mr.  Van  Torp  has  got  up  this  campaign  against 
himself  in  order  to  play  some  trick  on  the  Stock  Ex 
change?' 

Logo  the  ti  smiled  and  shook  his  head. 

'That's  not  the  way  such  things  are  usually  managed/ 
he  answered.  'A  hundred  years  ago  a  publisher  paid 
a  critic  to  attack  a  book  in  order  to  make  it  succeed, 
but  in  finance  abuse  doesn't  contribute  to  our  success, 
which  is  always  a  question  of  credit.  All  these  scurrilous 
articles  have  set  the  public  very  much  against  Van  Torp, 
from  Paris  to  San  Francisco,  and  this  man  Feist  is  re 
sponsible  for  them.  He  is  either  insane,  or  he  has  some 
grudge  against  Van  Torp,  or  else  he  has  been  somebody's 
instrument,  which  looks  the  most  probable.' 

'What  did  you  find  amongst  his  papers?'  Margaret 
asked,  quite  forgetting  her  vicarious  scruples  about 
reading  a  sick  man's  letters. 

'A  complete  set  of  the  articles  that  have  appeared,  all 
neatly  filed,  and  a  great  many  notes  for  more,  besides 


294  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xin 

a  lot  of  -stuff  written  in  cypher.  It  must  be  a  diary, 
for  the  days  are  written  out  in  full  and  give  the  days  of 
the  week.' 

'I  wonder  whether  there  was  anything  about  the 
explosion/  said  Margaret  thoughtfully.  'He  said  he 
was  there,  did  he  not?' 

'Yes.    Do  you  remember  the  day?' 

'It  was  a  Wednesday,  I'm  sure,  and  it  was  after  the 
middle  of  March.  My  maid  can  tell  us,  for  she  writes 
down  the  date  and  the  opera  in  a  little  book  each  time 
I  sing.  It's  sometimes  very  convenient.  But  it's  too 
late  now,  of  course,  and,  besides,  you  could  not  have 
read  the  cypher/ 

'That's  an  easy  matter,'  Logotheti  answered.  'All 
cyphers  can  be  read  by  experts,  if  there  is  no  hurry, 
except  the  mechanical  ones  that  are  written  through 
holes  in  a  square  plate  which  you  turn  round  till  the 
sheet  is  full.  Hardly  any  one  uses  those  now,  because 
when  the  square  is  raised  the  letters  don't  form  words, 
and  the  cable  companies  will  only  transmit  real  words 
in  some  known  language,  or  groups  of  figures.  The  diary 
is  written  hastily,  too,  not  at  all  as  if  it  were  copied  from 
the  sheet  on  which  the  perforated  plate  would  have  had 
to  be  used,  and  besides,  the  plate  itself  would  be  amongst 
his  things,  for  he  could  not  read  his  own  notes  without 
it.' 

'All  that  doesn't  help  us,  as  you  have  not  the  diary, 
but  I  should  really  be  curious  to  know  what  he  had  to 
say  about  the  accident,  since  some  of  the  articles  hint 
that  Mr.  Van  Torp  made  it  happen.' 


CHAP,  xin  THE  PRIMADONNA  295 

'My  doctor  and  I  took  the  liberty  of  confiscating  the 
papers,  and  we  set  a  very  good  man  to  work  on  the 
cypher  at  once.  So  your  curiosity  shall  be  satisfied. 
I  said  it  should,  didn't  I?  And  you  are  not  so  dread 
fully  bored  after  all,  are  you?  Do  say  that  I'm  very 
nice ! ' 

'I  won't!'  Margaret  answered  with  a  little  laugh. 
'I'll  only  admit  that  I'm  not  bored!  But  wasn't  it 
rather  a  high-handed  proceeding  to  carry  off  Mr.  Feist 
like  that,  and  to  seize  his  papers?' 

'  Do  you  call  it  high-handed  to  keep  a  man  from  cutting 
his  throat?' 

'But  the  letters ?' 

'I  really  don't  know.  I  had  not  time  to  ask  a  lawyer's 
opinion,  and  so  I  had  to  be  satisfied  with  my  doctor's.' 

'Are  you  going  to  tell  Mr.  Van  Torp  what  you've 
done?' 

'  I  don't  know.     Why  should  I  ?    You  may  if  you  like.' 

Logotheti  was  eating  a  very  large  and  excellent  truffle, 
and  after  each  short  sentence  he  cut  off  a  tiny  slice  and 
put  it  into  his  mouth.  The  Primadonna  had  already 
finished  hers,  and  watched  him  thoughtfully. 

'I'm  not  likely  to  see  him,'  she  said.  'At  least,  I 
hope  not ! ' 

'My  interest  in  Mr.  Feist/  answered  Logotheti,  'begins 
and  ends  with  what  concerns  you.  Beyond  that  I 
don't  care  a  straw  what  happens  to  Mr.  Van  Torp,  or 
to  any  one  else.  To  all  intents  and  purposes  I  have  got 
the  author  of  the  stories  locked  up,  for  a  man  who  has 
consented  to  undergo  treatment  for  dipsomania  in  a 


296  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

private  hospital,  by  the  advice  of  his  friends  and  under 
the  care  of  a  doctor  with  a  great  reputation,  is  as  really 
in  prison  as  if  he  were  in  gaol.  Legally,  he  can  get  out, 
but  in  real  fact  nobody  will  lift  a  hand  to  release  him, 
because  he  is  shut  up  for  his  own  good  and  for  the  good 
of  the  public,  just  as  much  as  if  he  were  a  criminal. 
Feist  may  have  friends  or  relations  in  America,  and  they 
may  come  and  claim  him;  but  as  there  seems  to  be 
nobody  in  London  who  cares  what  becomes  of  him,  it 
pleases  me  to  keep  him  in  confinement,  because  I  mean 
to  prevent  any  further  mention  of  your  name  in  con 
nection  with  the  Van  Torp  scandals/ 

His  eyes  rested  on  Margaret  as  he  spoke,  and  lin 
gered  afterwards,  with  a  look  that  did  not  escape  her. 
She  had  seen  him  swayed  by  passion,  more  than  once, 
and  almost  mad  for  her,  and  she  had  been  frightened 
though  she  had  dominated  him.  What  she  saw  in  his 
face  now  was  not  that;  it  was  more  like  affection,  faith 
ful  and  lasting,  and  it  touched  her  English  nature  much 
more  than  any  show  of  passion  could. 

'Thank  you/  she  said  quietly. 

They  did  not  talk  much  more  while  they  finished  the 
short  dinner,  but  when  they  were  going  back  to  the 
drawing-room  Margaret  took  his  arm,  in  foreign  fashion, 
which  she  had  never  done  before  when  they  were  alone. 
Then  he  stood  before  the  mantelpiece  and  watched  her 
in  silence  as  she  moved  about  the  room;  for  she  was  one 
of  those  women  who  always  find  half  a  dozen  little 
things  to  do  as  soon  as  they  get  back  from  dinner,  and 
go  from  place  to  place,  moving  a  reading  lamp  half  an 


CHAP,  xill  THE   PRIMADONNA  297 

inch  farther  from  the  edge  of  a  table,  shutting  a  book 
that  has  been  left  open  on  another,  tearing  up  a  letter 
that  lies  on  the  writing-desk,  and  slightly  changing  the 
angle  at  which  a  chair  stands.  It  is  an  odd  little  mania, 
and  the  more  people  there  are  in  the  room  the  less  the 
mistress  of  the  house  yields  to  it,  and  the  more  uncom 
fortable  she  feels  at  being  hindered  from  '  tidying  up  the 
room/  as  she  probably  calls  it. 

Logotheti  watched  Margaret  with  keen  pleasure,  as 
every  step  and  little  movement  showed  her  figure  in  a 
slightly  different  attitude  and  light,  indiscreetly  moulded 
in  the  perfection  of  her  matchless  gown.  In  less  than 
two  minutes  she  had  finished  her  trip  round  the  room 
and  was  standing  beside  him,  her  elbows  resting  on  the 
mantelpiece,  while  she  moved  a  beautiful  Tanagra  a  little 
to  one  side  and  then  to  the  other,  trying  for  the  twentieth 
time  how  it  looked  the  best. 

' There  is  no  denying  it,'  Logotheti  said  at  last,  with 
profound  conviction.  'I  do  not  care  a  straw  what  be 
comes  of  any  living  creature  but  you.' 

She  did  not  turn  her  head,  and  her  fingers  still  touched 
the  Tanagra,  but  he  saw  the  rare  blush  spread  up  the 
cheek  that  was  turned  to  him;  and  because  she  stopped 
moving  the  statuette  about,  and  looked  at  it  intently, 
he  guessed  that  she  was  not  colouring  from  annoyance 
at  what  he  had  said.  She  blushed  so  very  seldom  now, 
that  it  might  mean  much  more  than  in  the  old  days  at 
Versailles. 

'I  did  not  think  it  would  last  so  long,'  she  said  gently, 
after  a  little  while. 


298  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiil 

'What  faith  can  one  expect  of  a  Greek  I' 

He  laughed,  too  wise  in  woman's  ways  to  be  serious 
too  long  just  then.  But  she  shook  her  head  and  turned 
to  him  with  the  smile  he  loved. 

'I  thought  it  was  something  different/  she  said.  'I 
was  mistaken.  I  believed  you  had  only  lost  your  head 
for  a  while,  and  would  soon  run  after  some  one  else. 
That's  all.' 

'And  the  loss  is  permanent.  That's  all ! '  He  laughed 
again  as  he  repeated  her  words.  'You  thought  it  was 
"something  different"  -  do  you  know  that  you  are  two 
people  in  one?' 

She  looked  a  little  surprised. 

'Indeed  I  do!'  she  answered  rather  sadly.  'Have 
you  found  it  out?7 

'Yes.  You  are  Margaret  Donne  and  you  are  Cor 
dova.  I  admire  Cordova  immensely,  I  am  extremely 
fond  of  Margaret,  and  I'm  in  love  with  both.  Oh  yes! 
I'm  quite  frank  about  it,  and  it's  very  unlucky,  for 
whichever  one  of  your  two  selves  I  meet  I'm  just  as 
much  in  love  as  ever!  Absurd,  isn't  it?; 

'It's  flattering,  at  all  events.' 

'  If  you  ever  took  it  into  your  handsome  head  to  marry 
me  —  please,  I'm  only  saying  "if"  —  the  absurdity 
would  be  rather  reassuring,  wouldn't  it?  When  a  man  is 
in  love  with  two  women  at  the  same  time,  it  really  is  a 
little  unlikely  that  he  should  fall  in  love  with  a  third!' 

'Mr.  Griggs  says  that  marriage  is  a  drama  which  only 
succeeds  if  people  preserve  the  unities!' 

'Griggs  is  always  trying  to  coax  the  Djin  back  into 


CHAP,  xiil  THE  PRIMADONNA  299 

the  bottle,  like  the  fisherman  in  the  Arabian  Nights,' 
answered  Logotheti.  'He  has  read  Kant  till  he  believes 
that  the  greatest  things  in  the  world  can  be  squeezed 
into  a  formula  of  ten  words,  or  nailed  up  amongst  the 
Categories  like  a  dead  owl  over  a  stable  door.  My 
intelligence,  such  as  it  is,  abhors  definitions ! ' 

'So  do  I.    I  never  understand  them.' 

'Besides,  you  can  only  define  what  you  know  from 
past  experience  and  can  reflect  upon  coolly,  and  that  is 
not  my  position,  nor  yours  either.' 

Margaret  nodded,  but  said  nothing  and  sat  down. 

'Do  you  want  to  smoke?'  she  asked.  'You  may,  if 
you  like.  I  don't  mind  a  cigarette.' 

'No,  thank  you.' 

'But  I  assure  you  I  don't  mind  it  in  the  least.  It 
never  hurts  my  throat.' 

'Thanks,  but  I  really  don't  want  to.' 

'I'm  sure  you  do.    Please ' 

'Why  do  you  insist?  You  know  I  never  smoke  when 
you  are  in  the  room.' 

'I  don't  like  to  be  the  object  of  little  sacrifices  that 
make  people  uncomfortable.' 

'I'm  not  uncomfortable,  but  if  you  have  any  big 
sacrifice  to  suggest,  I  promise  to  offer  it  at  once.' 

'Unconditionally?'  Margaret  smiled.  'Anything  I 
ask?' 

'Yes.    Do  you  want  my  statue?' 

'The  Aphrodite?    Would  you  give  her  to  me?' 

'Yes.  May  I  telegraph  to  have  her  packed  and 
brought  here  from  Paris?' 


300  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xin 

He  was  already  at  the  writing-table  looking  for  a  tele 
graph  form.  Margaret  watched  his  face,  for  she  knew 
that  he  valued  the  wonderful  statue  far  beyond  all  his 
treasures,  both  for  its  own  sake  and  because  he  had 
nearly  lost  his  life  in  carrying  it  off  from  Samos,  as  has 
been  told  elsewhere. 

As  Margaret  said  nothing,  he  began  to  write  the  mes 
sage.  She  really  had  not  had  any  idea  of  testing  his 
willingness  to  part  with  the  thing  he  valued  most,  at  her 
slightest  word,  and  was  taken  by  surprise;  but  it  was 
impossible  not  to  be  pleased  when  she  saw  that  he  was 
in  earnest.  In  her  present  mood,  too,  it  restored  her 
sense  of  power,  which  had  been  rudely  shaken  by  the 
attitude  of  the  public  on  the  previous  evening. 

It  took  some  minutes  to  compose  the  message. 

'It's  only  to  save  time  by  having  the  box  ready/  he  said, 
as  he  rose  with  the  bit  of  paper  in  his  hand.  '  Of  course  I 
shall  see  the  statue  packed  myself  and  come  over  with  it.' 

She  saw  his  face  clearly  in  the  light  as  he  came 
towards  her,  and  there  was  no  mistaking  the  unaffected 
satisfaction  it  expressed.  He  held  out  the  telegram 
for  her  to  read,  but  she  would  not  take  it,  and  she  looked 
up  quietly  and  earnestly  as  he  stood  beside  her. 

'Do  you  remember  Delorges?'  she  asked.  'How  the 
lady  tossed  her  glove  amongst  the  lions  and  bade  him 
fetch  it,  if  he  loved  her,  and  how  he  went  in  and  got  it  — 
and  then  threw  it  in  her  face?  I  feel  like  her.' 

Logotheti  looked  at  her  blankly. 

'Do  you  mean  to  say  you  won't  take  the  statue?' 
he  asked  in  a  disappointed  tone. 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  301 

1  No,  indeed !  I  was  taken  by  surprise  when  you  went 
to  the  writing-table.' 

'You  did  not  believe  I  was  in  earnest?  Don't  you 
see  that  I'm  disappointed  now?'  His  voice  changed  a 
little.  'Don't  you  understand  that  if  the  world  were 
mine  I  should  want  to  give  it  all  to  you?' 

'And  don't  you  understand  that  the  wish  may  be 
quite  as  much  to  me  as  the  deed?  That  sounds  com 
monplace,  I  know.  I  would  say  it  better  if  I  could.' 

She  folded  her  hands  on  her  knee,  and  looked  at  them 
thoughtfully  while  he  sat  down  beside  her. 

'You  say  it  well  enough,'  he  answered  after  a  little 
pause.  'The  trouble  lies  there.  The  wish  is  all  you 
will  ever  take.  I  have  submitted  to  that;  but  if  you 
ever  change  your  mind,  please  remember  that  I  have 
not  changed  mine.  For  two  years  I've  done  everything 
I  can  to  make  you  marry  me  whether  you  would  or  not, 
and  you've  forgiven  me  for  trying  to  carry  you  off  against 
your  will,  and  for  several  other  things,  but  you  are  no 
nearer  to  caring  for  me  ever  so  little  than  you  were  the 
first  day  we  met.  You  "like"  me!  That's  the  worst 
of  it!' 

'I'm  not  so  sure  of  that,'  Margaret  answered,  raising 
her  eyes  for  a  moment  and  then  looking  at  her  hands 
again. 

He  turned  his  head  slowly,  but  there  was  a  startled 
look  in  his  eyes. 

'Do  you  feel  as  if  you  could  hate  me  a  little,  for  a 
change?'  he  asked. 

'No.' 


302  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XIII 

'  There's  only  one  other  thing/  he  said  in  a  low  voice. 

'  Perhaps/  Margaret  answered,  in  an  even  lower  tone 
than  his.  'I'm  not  quite  sure  to-day/ 

Logotheti  had  known  her  long,  and  he  now  resisted 
the  strong  impulse  to  reach  out  and  take  the  hand  she 
would  surely  have  let  him  hold  hi  his  for  a  moment. 
She  was  not  disappointed  because  he  neither  spoke  nor 
moved,  nor  took  any  sudden  advantage  of  her  rather 
timid  admission,  for  his  silence  made  her  trust  him 
more  than  any  passionate  speech  or  impulsive  action 
could  have  done. 

'I  daresay  I  am  wrong  to  tell  you  even  that  much/ 
she  went  on  presently,  'but  I  do  so  want  to  play  fair. 
I've  always  despised  women  who  cannot  make  up  their 
minds  whether  they  care  for  a  man  or  not.  But  you 
have  found  out  my  secret;  I  am  two  people  in  one,  and 
there  are  days  when  each  makes  the  other  dreadfully 
uncomfortable!  You  understand.' 

'  And  it's  the  Cordova  that  neither  likes  me  nor  hates 
me  just  at  this  moment/  suggested  Logotheti.  'Mar 
garet  Donne  sometimes  hates  me  and  sometimes  likes 
me,  and  on  some  days  she  can  be  quite  indifferent  too! 
Is  that  it?' 

'Yes.    That's  it.' 

.  'The  only  question  is,  which  of  you  is  to  be  mistress 
of  the  house/  said  Logotheti,  smiling,  'and  whether 
it  is  to  be  always  the  same  one,  or  if  there  is  to  be  a 
perpetual  hide-and-seek  between  them!' 

'Box  and  Cox/  suggested  Margaret,  glad  of  the  chance 
to  say  something  frivolous  just  then. 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  303 

'I  should  say  Hera  and  Aphrodite/  answered  the  Greek, 
'if  it  did  not  look  like  comparing  myself  to  Adonis! ; 

'It  sounds  better  than  Box  and  Cox,  but  I  have  for 
gotten  my  mythology.' 

'Hera  and  Aphrodite  agreed  that  each  should  keep 
Adonis  one-third  of  the  year,  and  that  he  should  have 
the  odd  four  months  to  himself.  Now  that  you  are  the 
Cordova,  if  you  could  come  to  some  such  understanding 
about  me  with  Miss  Donne,  it  would  be  very  satisfactory. 
But  I  am  afraid  Margaret  does  not  want  even  a  third 
of  me!' 

Logotheti  felt  that  it  was  rather  ponderous  fun,  but 
he  was  in  such  an  anxious  state  that  his  usually  ready 
wit  did  not  serve  him  very  well.  For  the  first  time  since 
he  had  known  her,  Margaret  had  confessed  that  she 
might  possibly  fall  in  love  with  him;  and  after  what  had 
passed  between  them  in  former  days,  he  knew  that  the 
smallest  mistake  on  his  part  would  now  be  fatal  to  the 
realisation  of  such  a  possibility.  He  was  not  afraid  of 
being  dull,  or  of  boring  her,  but  he  was  afraid  of  waken 
ing  against  him  the  wary  watchfulness  of  that  side  of 
her  nature  which  he  called  Margaret  Donne,  as  dis 
tinguished  from  Cordova,  of  the  'English-girl'  side,  of 
the  potential  old  maid  that  is  dormant  in  every  young 
northern  woman  until  the  day  she  marries,  and  wakes  to 
torment  her  like  a  biblical  devil  if  she  does  not.  There  is 
no  miser  like  a  reformed  spendthrift,  and  no  ascetic 
will  go  to  such  extremes  of  self-mortification  as  a  con 
verted  libertine;  in  the  same  way,  there  are  no  such 
portentously  virginal  old  maids  as  those  who  might  have 


304  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

been  the  most  womanly  wives;  the  opposite  is  certainly 
true  also,  for  the  variety  '  Hemiparthenos/  studied  after 
nature  by  Marcel  Prevost,  generally  makes  an  utter 
failure  of  matrimony,  and  becomes,  in  fact,  little  better 
than  a  half- wife. 

Logotheti  took  it  as  a  good  sign  that  Margaret  laughed 
at  what  he  said.  He  was  in  the  rather  absurd  position 
of  wishing  to  leave  her  while  she  was  in  her  present 
humour,  lest  anything  should  disturb  it  and  destroy 
his  advantage;  yet,  after  what  had  just  passed,  it  was 
next  to  impossible  not  to  talk  of  her,  or  of  himself.  He 
had  exceptionally  good  nerves,  he  was  generally  cool  to 
a  fault,  and  he  had  the  daring  that  makes  great  financiers. 
But  what  looked  like  the  most  important  crisis  of  his 
life  had  presented  itself  unexpectedly  within  a  few 
minutes;  a  success  which  he  reckoned  far  beyond  all 
other  successes  was  almost  within  his  grasp,  and  he  felt 
that  he  was  unprepared.  For  the  first  time  he  did  not 
know  what  to  say  to  a  woman. 

Happily  for  him,  Margaret  helped  him  unexpectedly. 

'I  shall  have  to  see  Lady  Maud/  she  said,  'and  you 
must  either  go  when  she  comes  or  leave  with  her.  I'm 
sorry,  but  you  understand,  don't  you?' 

1  Of  course.  I'll  go  a  moment  after  she  comes.  When 
am  I  to  see  you  again?  To-morrow?  You  are  not  to 
sing  again  this  week,  are  you?' 

'No,'  the  Primadonna  answered  vaguely,  'I  believe 
not.' 

She  was  thinking  of  something  else.  She  was  wonder 
ing  whether  Logotheti  would  wish  her  to  give  up  the 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  305 

stage,  if  by  any  possibility  she  ever  married  him,  and 
her  thoughts  led  her  on  quickly  to  the  consideration  of 
what  that  would  mean,  and  to  asking  herself  what  sort 
of  sacrifice  it  would  really  mean  to  her.  For  the 
recollection  of  the  Elisir  d'Amore  awoke  and  began  to 
rankle  again  just  then. 

Logotheti  did  not  press  her  for  an  answer,  but  watched 
her  cautiously  while  her  eyes  were  turned  away  from 
him.  At  that  moment  he  felt  like  a  tamer  who  had  just 
succeeded  in  making  a  tiger  give  its  paw  for  the  first 
time,  and  has  not  the  smallest  idea  whether  the  creature 
will  do  it  again  or  bite  off  his  head. 

She,  on  her  side,  being  at  the  moment  altogether  the 
artist,  was  thinking  that  it  would  be  pleasant  to  enjoy 
a  few  more  triumphs,  to  make  the  tour  of  Europe  with  a 
company  of  her  own  —  which  is  always  the  primadonna's 
dream  as  it  is  the  actress's  —  and  to  leave  the  stage  at 
twenty-five  in  a  blaze  of  glory,  rather  than  to  risk  one 
more  performance  of  the  opera  she  now  hated.  She 
knew  quite  well  that  it  was  not  at  all  an  impossibility. 
To  please  her,  and  with  the  expectation  of  marrying 
her  in  six  months,  Logotheti  would  cheerfully  pay  the 
large  forfeit  that  would  be  due  to  Schreiermeyer  if  she 
broke  her  London  engagement  at  the  height  of  the  sea 
son,  and  the  Greek  financier  would  produce  all  the  ready 
money  necessary  for  getting  together  an  opera  company. 
The  rest  would  be  child's  play,  she  was  sure,  and  she 
would  make  a  triumphant  progress  through  the  capitals 
of  Europe  which  should  be  remembered  for  half  a  century. 
After  that,  said  the  Primadonna  to  herself,  she  would 


306  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

repay  her  friend  all  the  money  he  had  lent  her,  and 
would  then  decide  at  her  leisure  whether  she  would 
marry  him  or  not.  For  one  moment  her  cynicism  would 
have  surprised  even  Schreiermeyer;  the  next,  the  Prima- 
donna  herself  was  ashamed  of  it,  quite  independently 
of  what  her  better  self  might  have  thought. 

Besides,  it  was  certainly  not  for  his  money  that  her 
old  inclination  for  Logotheti  had  begun  to  grow  again. 
She  could  say  so,  truly  enough,  and  when  she  felt  sure 
of  it  she  turned  her  eyes  to  see  his  face. 

She  did  not  admire  him  for  his  looks,  either.  So  far 
as  appearance  was  concerned,  she  preferred  Lushington, 
with  his  smooth  hair  and  fair  complexion.  Logotheti 
was  a  handsome  and  showy  Oriental,  that  was  all,  and 
she  knew  instinctively  that  the  type  must  be  common 
in  the  East.  What  attracted  her  was  probably  his  dar 
ing  masculineness,  which  contrasted  so  strongly  with 
Lushington's  quiet  and  rather  bashful  manliness.  The 
Englishman  would  die  for  a  cause  and  make  no  noise 
about  it,  which  would  be  heroic;  but  the  Greek  would 
run  away  with  a  woman  he  loved,  at  the  risk  of  breaking 
his  neck,  which  was  romantic  in  the  extreme.  It  is 
not  easy  to  be  a  romantic  character  in  the  eyes  of  a  lady 
who  lives  on  the  stage,  and  by  it,  and  constantly  gives 
utterance  to  the  most  dramatic  sentiments  at  a  pitch 
an  octave  higher  than  any  one  else;  but  Logotheti  had 
succeeded.  There  never  was  a  woman  yet  to  whom 
that  sort  of  thing  has  not  appealed  once;  for  one  moment 
she  has  felt  everything  whirling  with  her  as  if  the  centre 
of  gravity  had  gone  mad,  and  the  Ten  Commandments 


CHAP,  xiil  THE   PRIMADONNA  307 

might  drop  out  of  the  solid  family  Bible  and  get  lost. 
That  recollection  is  probably  the  only  secret  of  a  virtu 
ously  colourless  existence,  but  she  hides  it,  like  a  treas 
ure  or  a  crime,  until  she  is  an  old  and  widowed  woman; 
and  one  day,  at  last,  she  tells  her  grown-up  grand 
daughter,  with  a  far-away  smile,  that  there  was  once  a 
man  whose  eyes  and  voice  stirred  her  strongly,  and  for 
whom  she  might  have  quite  lost  her  head.  But  she 
never  saw  him  again,  and  that  is  the  end  of  the  little 
story;  and  the  tall  girl  in  her  first  season  thinks  it 
rather  dull. 

But  it  was  not  likely  that  the  chronicle  of  Cordova's 
youth  should  come  to  such  an  abrupt  conclusion.  The 
man  who  moved  her  now  had  been  near  her  too  often, 
the  sound  of  his  voice  was  too  easily  recalled,  and,  since 
his  rival's  defection,  he  was  too  necessary  to  her;  and, 
besides,  he  was  as  obstinate  as  Christopher  Columbus. 

'Let  me  see,'  she  said  thoughtfully.  'There's  a  re 
hearsal  to-morrow  morning.  That  means  a  late  luncheon. 
Come  at  two  o'clock,  and  if  it's  fine  we  can  go  for  a  little 
walk.  Will  you?' 

'Of  course.     Thank  you/ 

He  had  hardly  spoken  the  words  when  a  servant 
opened  the  door  and  Lady  Maud  came  in.  She  had  not 
dropped  the  opera  cloak  she  wore  over  her  black  velvet 
gown ;  she  was  rather  pale,  and  the  look  in  her  eyes  told 
that  something  was  wrong,  but  her  serenity  did  not  seem 
otherwise  affected.  She  kissed  Margaret  and  gave  her 
hand  to  Logotheti. 

'We  dined  early  to  go  to  the  play/  she  said,  'and  as 


308  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xm 

there's  a  curtain-raiser,  I  thought  I  might  as  well  take 
a  hansom  and  join  them  later.' 

She  seated  herself  beside  Margaret  on  one  of  those 
little  sofas  that  are  measured  to  hold  two  women  when 
the  fashions  are  moderate,  and  are  wide  enough  for  a 
woman  and  one  man,  whatever  happens.  Indeed  they 
must  be,  since  otherwise  no  one  would  tolerate  them  in 
a  drawing-room.  When  two  women  instal  themselves 
in  one,  and  a  man  is  present,  it  means  that  he  is  to 
go  away,  because  they  are  either  going  to  make  con 
fidences  or  are  going  to  fight. 

Logotheti  thought  it  would  be  simpler  and  more  tact 
ful  to  go  at  once,  since  Lady  Maud  was  in  a  hurry,  having 
stopped  on  her  way  to  the  play,  presumably  in  the  hope 
of  seeing  Margaret  alone.  To  his  surprise  she  asked 
him  to  stay;  but  as  he  thought  she  might  be  doing  this 
out  of  mere  civility  he  said  he  had  an  engagement. 

'Will  it  keep  for  ten  minutes?'  asked  Lady  Maud 
gravely. 

'  Engagements  of  that  sort  are  very  convenient.  They 
will  keep  any  length  of  time.' 

Logotheti  sat  down  again,  smiling,  but  he  wondered 
what  Lady  Maud  was  going  to  say,  and  why  she  wished 
him  to  remain. 

'It  will  save  a  note,'  she  said,  by  way  of  explanation. 
'My  father  and  I  want  you  to  come  to  Craythew  for  the 
week-end  after  this,'  she  continued,  turning  to  Mar 
garet.  'We  are  asking  several  people,  so  it  won't  be 
too  awfully  dull,  I  hope.  Will  you  come?' 

'With  pleasure,'  answered  the  singer. 


CHAP.  XIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  309 

'And  you  too?'    Lady  Maud  looked  at  Logo  the  ti. 

'Delighted  —  most  kind  of  you/  he  replied,  somewhat 
surprised  by  the  invitation,  for  he  had  never  met  Lord 
and  Lady  Creedmore.  'May  I  take  you  down  in  my 
motor?'  he  spoke  to  Margaret.  'I  think  I  can  do  it 
under  four  hours.  I'm  my  own  chauffeur,  you  know.' 

'Yes,  I  know,'  Margaret  answered  with  a  rather 
malicious  smile.  'No,  thank  you!' 

'Does  he  often  kill?'  inquired  Lady  Maud  coolly. 

'I  should  be  more  afraid  of  a  runaway,'  Margaret 
said. 

'Get  that  new  German  brake,'  suggested  Lady  Maud, 
not  understanding  at  all.  'It's  quite  the  best  I've  seen. 
Come  on  Friday,  if  you  can.  You  don't  mind  meeting 
Mr.  Van  Torp,  do  you?  He  is  our  neighbour,  you  re 
member.' 

The  question  was  addressed  to  Margaret,  who  made 
a  slight  movement  and  unconsciously  glanced  at  Logo- 
theti  before  she  answered. 

'Not  at  all,'  she  said. 

'There's  a  reason  for  asking  him  when  there  are  other 
people.  I'm  not  divorced  after  all  —  you  had  not  heard? 
It  will  be  in  the  Times  to-morrow  morning.  The  Patri 
arch  of  Constantinople  turns  out  to  be  a  very  sensible 
sort  of  person.' 

'He's  my  uncle/  observed  Logotheti. 

'Is  he?  But  that  wouldn't  account  for  it,  would  it? 
He  refused  to  believe  what  my  husband  called  the  evi 
dence,  and  dismissed  the  suit.  As  the  trouble  was  all 
about  Mr.  Van  Torp  my  father  wants  people  to  see  him 


310  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xin 

at  Craythew.  That's  the  story  in  a  nutshell,  and  if  any 
of  you  like  me  you'll  be  nice  to  him.7 

She  leaned  back  in  her  corner  of  the  little  sofa  and 
looked  first  at  one  and  then  at  the  other  in  an  inquiring 
way,  but  as  if  she  were  fairly  sure  of  the  answer. 

1  Every  one  likes  you/  said  Logo  the  ti  quietly,  'and 
every  one  will  be  nice  to  him.7 

1  Of  course/  chimed  in  Margaret. 

She  could  say  nothing  else,  though  her  intense  dislike 
of  the  American  millionaire  almost  destroyed  the  antici 
pated  pleasure  of  her  visit  to  Derbyshire. 

'I  thought  it  just  as  well  to  explain/  said  Lady  Maud. 

She  was  still  pale,  and  in  spite  of  her  perfect  outward 
coolness  and  self-reliance  her  eyes  would  have  betrayed 
her  anxiety  if  she  had  not  managed  them  with  the  un 
conscious  skill  of  a  woman  of  the  world  wrho  has  some 
thing  very  important  to  hide.  Logotheti  broke  the 
short  silence  that  followed  her  last  speech. 

'I  think  you  ought  to  know  something  I  have  been 
telling  Miss  Donne/  he  said  simply.  'I've  found  the 
man  who  wrote  all  those  articles,  and  I've  locked  him 
up.' 

Lady  Maud  leaned  forward  so  suddenly  that  her 
loosened  opera-cloak  slipped  down  behind  her,  leaving 
her  neck  and  shoulders  bare.  Her  eyes  were  wide  open 
in  her  surprise,  the  pupils  very  dark. 

'Where?'  she  asked  breathlessly.  'Where  is  he?  In 
prison?' 

'In  a  more  convenient  and  accessible  place/  answered 
the  Greek. 


CHAP,  xin  THE  PRIMADONNA  311 

He  had  known  Lady  Maud  some  time,  but  he  had 
never  seen  her  in  the  least  disturbed,  or  surprised,  or 
otherwise  moved  by  anything.  It  was  true  that  he  had 
only  met  her  in  society. 

He  told  the  story  of  Mr.  Feist,  as  Margaret  had  heard 
it  during  dinner,  and  Lady  Maud  did  not  move,  even  to 
lean  back  in  her  seat  again,  till  he  had  finished.  She 
scarcely  seemed  to  breathe,  and  Logotheti  felt  her  steady 
gaze  on  him,  and  would  have  sworn  that  through  all 
those  minutes  she  did  not  even  wink.  When  he  ceased 
speaking  she  drew  a  long  breath  and  sank  back  to  her 
former  attitude;  but  he  saw  that  her  white  neck  heaved 
suddenly  again  and  again,  and  her  delicate  nostrils 
quivered  once  or  twice.  For  a  little  while  there  was 
silence  in  the  room.  Then  Lady  Maud  rose  to  go. 

'I  must  be  going  too/  said  Logotheti. 

Margaret  was  a  little  sorry  that  she  had  given  him 
such  precise  instructions,  but  did  not  contradict  herself 
by  asking  him  to  stay  longer.  She  promised  Lady 
Maud  again  to  be  at  Craythew  on  Friday  of  the  next 
week  if  possible,  and  certainly  on  Saturday,  and  Lady 
Maud  and  Logotheti  went  out  together. 

'Get  in  with  me/  she  said  quietly,  as  he  helped  her 
into  her  hansom. 

He  obeyed,  and  as  he  sat  down  she  told  the  cabman 
to  take  her  to  the  Haymarket  Theatre.  Logotheti  ex 
pected  her  to  speak,  for  he  was  quite  sure  that  she  had 
not  taken  him  with  her  without  a  purpose;  the  more  so, 
as  she  had  not  even  asked  him  where  he  was  going. 

Three  or  four  minutes  passed  before  he  heard  her 


312  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xin 

voice  asking  him  a  question,  very  low,  as  if  she  feared 
to  be  overheard. 

'Is  there  any  way  of  making  that  man  tell  the  truth 
against  his  will?  You  have  lived  in  the  East,  and  you 
must  know  about  such  things.' 

Logotheti  turned  his  almond-shaped  eyes  slowly  to 
wards  her,  but  he  could  not  see  her  face  well,  for  it  was 
not  very  light  in  the  broad  West  End  street.  She  was 
white;  that  was  all  he  could  make  out.  But  he  under 
stood  what  she  meant. 

'There  is  a  way/  he  answered  slowly  and  almost 
sternly.  'Why  do  you  ask?' 

'  Mr.  Van  Torp  is  going  to  be  accused  of  murder.  That 
man  knows  who  did  it.  Will  you  help  me?' 

It  seemed  an  age  before  the  answer  to  her  whispered 
question  came. 

'Yes.' 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WHEN  Logotheti  and  his  doctor  had  taken  Mr.  Feist 
away  from  the  hotel,  to  the  no  small  satisfaction  of  the 
management,  they  had  left  precise  instructions  for  for 
warding  the  young  man's  letters  and  for  informing  his 
friends,  if  any  appeared,  as  to  his  whereabouts.  But 
Logotheti  had  not  given  his  own  name. 

Sir  Jasper  Threlfall  had  chosen  for  their  patient  a 
private  establishment  in  Ealing,  owned  and  managed 
by  a  friend  of  his,  a  place  for  the  treatment  of  morphia 
mania,  opium-eating,  and  alcoholism. 

To  all  intents  and  purposes,  as  Logotheti  had  told 
Margaret,  Charles  Feist  might  as  well  have  been  in  gaol. 
Every  one  knows  how  indispensable  it  is  that  persons 
who  consent  to  be  cured  of  drinking  or  taking  opium, 
or  whom  it  is  attempted  to  cure,  should  be  absolutely 
isolated,  if  only  to  prevent  weak  and  pitying  friends 
from  yielding  to  their  heart-rending  entreaties  for  the 
favourite  drug  and  bringing  them  'just  a  little';  for 
their  eloquence  is  often  extraordinary,  and  their  in 
genuity  in  obtaining  what  they  want  is  amazing. 

So  Mr.  Feist  was  shut  up  in  a  pleasant  room  provided 
with  double  doors  and  two  strongly  barred  windows 
that  overlooked  a  pretty  garden,  beyond  which  there 
was  a  high  brick  wall  half  covered  by  a  bright  creeper, 

313 


314  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiv 

then  just  beginning  to  flower.  The  walls,  the  doors, 
the  ceiling,  and  the  floor  were  sound-proof,  and  the 
garden  could  not  in  any  way  be  reached  without  passing 
through  the  house. 

As  only  male  patients  were  received,  the  nurses  and 
attendants  were  all  men;  for  the  treatment  needed 
more  firmness  and  sometimes  strength  than  gentleness. 
It  was  uncompromising,  as  English  methods  often  are. 
Except  where  life  w?,s  actually  in  danger,  there  was  no 
drink  and  no  opium  for  anybody;  when  absolutely 
necessary  the  resident  doctor  gave  the  patient  hypo 
dermics  or  something  which  he  called  by  an  unpro 
nounceable  name,  lest  the  sufferer  should  afterwards  try 
to  buy  it;  he  smilingly  described  it  as  a  new  vegetable 
poison,  and  in  fact  it  was  nothing  but  dionine,  a  prep 
aration  of  opium  that  differs  but  little  from  ordinary 
morphia. 

Now  Sir  Jasper  Threlfall  was  a  very  great  doctor 
indeed,  and  his  name  commanded  respect  in  London 
at  large  and  inspired  awe  in  the  hospitals.  Even  the 
profession  admitted  reluctantly  that  he  did  not  kill 
more  patients  than  he  cured,  which  is  something  for 
one  fashionable  doctor  to  say  of  another;  for  the  regular 
answer  to  any  inquiry  about  a  rival  practitioner  is  a 
smile  —  'a  smile  more  dreadful  than  his  own  dreadful 
frown '  —  an  indescribable  smile,  a  meaning  smile,  a 
smile  that  is  a  libel  in  itself. 

It  had  been  an  act  of  humanity  to  take  the  young 
man  into  medical  custody,  as  it  were,  and  it  had  been 
more  or  less  necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  public,  for 


CHAP,  xrv  THE   PRIMADONNA  315 

Logotheti  and  the  doctor  had  found  him  in  a  really 
dangerous  state,  as  was  amply  proved  by  his  attempt 
ing  to  cut  his  own  throat  and  then  to  shoot  Logotheti 
himself.  Sir  Jasper  said  he  had  nothing  especial  the 
matter  with  him  except  drink,  that  when  his  nerves 
had  recovered  their  normal  tone  his  real  character  would 
appear,  so  that  it  would  then  be  possible  to  judge  more 
or  less  whether  he  had  will  enough  to  control  himself 
in  future.  Logotheti  agreed,  but  it  occurred  to  him 
that  one  need  not  be  knighted,  and  write  a  dozen  or 
more  mysterious  capital  letters  after  one's  name,  and 
live  in  Harley  Street,  in  order  to  reach  such  a  simple 
conclusion;  and  as  Logotheti  was  a  millionaire,  and 
liked  his  doctor  for  his  own  sake  rather  than  for  his 
skill,  he  told  him  this,  and  they  both  laughed  heartily. 
Almost  all  doctors,  except  those  in  French  plays,  have 
some  sense  of  humour. 

On  the  third  day  Isidore  Bamberger  came  to  the  door 
of  the  private  hospital  and  asked  to  see  Mr.  Feist. 
Not  having  heard  from  him,  he  had  been  to  the  hotel 
and  had  there  obtained  the  address.  The  doorkeeper 
was  a  quiet  man  who  had  lost  a  leg  in  South  Africa, 
after  having  been  otherwise  severely  wounded  five 
times  in  previous  engagements.  Mr.  Bamberger,  he 
said,  could  not  see  his  friend  yet.  A  part  of  the  cure 
consisted  in  complete  isolation  from  friends  during  the 
first  stages  of  the  treatment.  Sir  Jasper  Threlfall  had 
been  to  see  Mr.  Feist  that  morning.  He  had  been 
twice  already.  Dr.  Bream,  the  resident  physician,  gave 
the  doorkeeper  a  bulletin  every  morning  at  ten  for  the 


316  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiv 

benefit  of  each  patient's  friend;  the  notes  were  written 
on  a  card  which  the  man  held  in  his  hand. 

At  the  great  man's  name,  Mr.  Bamberger  became 
thoughtful.  A  smart  brougham  drove  up  just  then 
and  a  tall  woman,  who  wore  a  thick  veil,  got  out  and 
entered  the  vestibule  where  Bamberger  was  standing 
by  the  open  door.  The  doorkeeper  evidently  knew  her, 
for  he  glanced  at  his  notes  and  spoke  without  being 
questioned. 

'The  young  gentleman  is  doing  well  this  week,  my 
lady/  he  said.  'Sleeps  from  three  to  four  hours  at  a 
time.  Is  less  excited.  Appetite  improving.' 

'Can  I  see  him?'  asked  a  sad  and  gentle  voice  through 
the  veil. 

'Not  yet,  my  lady.' 

She  sighed  as  she  turned  to  go  out,  and  Mr.  Bam 
berger  thought  it  was  one  of  the  saddest  sighs  he  had 
ever  heard.  He  was  rather  a  soft-hearted  man. 

'Is  it  her  son?'  he  asked,  in  a  respectful  sort  of  way. 

'Yes,  sir.' 

'Drink?'  inquired  Mr.  Bamberger  in  the  same  tone. 

'  Not  allowed  to  give  any  information  except  to  family 
or  friends,  sir,'  answered  the  man.  'Rule  of  the  house, 
sir.  Very  strict.' 

'Quite  right,  of  course.  Excuse  me  for  asking.  But 
I  must  see  Mr.  Feist,  unless  he's  out  of  his  mind.  It's 
very  important.' 

'Dr.  Bream  sees  visitors  himself  from  ten  to  twelve, 
sir,  after  he's  been  his  rounds  to  the  patients'  rooms. 
You'll  have  to  get  permission  from  him/ 


CHAP,  xiv  THE  PRIMADONNA  317 

'But  it's  like  a  prison!'  exclaimed  Mr.  Bamberger. 

'Yes,  sir/  answered  the  old  soldier  imperturbably. 
'It's  just  like  a  prison.  It's  meant  to  be.; 

It  was  evidently  impossible  to  get  anything  more 
out  of  the  man,  who  did  not  pay  the  slightest  attention 
to  the  cheerful  little  noise  Mr.  Bamberger  made  by 
jingling  sovereigns  in  his  waistcoat  pocket;  there  was 
nothing  to  do  but  to  go  away,  and  Mr.  Bamberger  went 
out  very  much  annoyed  and  perplexed. 

He  knew  Van  Torp  well,  or  believed  that  he  did,  and 
it  was  like  the  man  whose  genius  had  created  the  Nickel 
Trust  to  have  boldly  sequestrated  his  enemy's  chief 
instrument,  and  in  such  a  clever  way  as  to  make  it 
probable  that  Mr.  Feist  might  be  kept  in  confinement 
as  long  as  his  captor  chose.  Doubtless  such  a  high 
handed  act  would  ultimately  go  against  the  latter  when 
on  his  trial,  but  in  the  meantime  the  chief  witness  was 
locked  up  and  could  not  get  out.  Sir  Jasper  Threlfall 
would  state  that  his  patient  was  in  such  a  state  of  health, 
owing  to  the  abuse  of  alcohol,  that  it  was  not  safe  to 
set  him  at  liberty,  and  that  in  his  present  condition  his 
mind  was  so  unsettled  by  drink  that  he  could  not  be 
regarded  as  a  sane  witness;  and  if  Sir  Jasper  Threlfall 
said  that,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  get  Charles  Feist  out 
of  Dr.  Bream's  establishment  in  less  than  three  months. 

Mr.  Bamberger  was  obliged  to  admit  that  his  partner, 
chief,  and  enemy  had  stolen  a  clever  march  on  him. 
Being  of  a  practical  turn  of  mind,  however,  and  not 
hampered  by  much  faith  in  mankind,  even  in  the  most 
eminent,  who  write  the  mysterious  capital  letters  after 


318  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  nr 

their  names,  he  wondered  to  what  extent  Van  Torp 
owned  Sir  Jasper,  and  he  went  to  see  him  on  pretence 
of  asking  advice  about  his  liver. 

The  great  man  gave  him  two  guineas'  worth  of 
thumping,  auscultating,  and  poking  in  the  ribs,  and 
told  him  rather  disagreeably  that  he  was  as  healthy  as 
a  young  crocodile,  and  had  a  somewhat  similar  con 
stitution.  A  partner  of  Mr.  Van  Torp,  the  American 
financier?  Indeed!  Sir  Jasper  had  heard  the  name 
but  had  never  seen  the  millionaire,  and  asked  politely 
whether  he  sometimes  came  to  England.  It  is  not  un 
truthful  to  ask  a  question  to  which  one  knows  the 
answer.  Mr.  Bamberger  himself,  for  instance,  who 
knew  that  he  was  perfectly  well,  was  just  going  to  put 
down  two  guineas  for  having  been  told  so,  in  answer  to 
a  question. 

'I  believe  you  are  treating  Mr.  Feist/  he  said,  going 
more  directly  to  the  point. 

'Mr.  Feist?'  repeated  the  great  authority  vaguely. 

'Yes.  Mr.  Charles  Feist.  He's  at  Dr.  Bream's 
private  hospital  in  West  Kensington.' 

'Ah,  yes,'  said  Sir  Jasper.  'Dr.  Bream  is  treating 
him.  He's  not  a  patient  of  mine.' 

'I  thought  I'd  ask  you  what  his  chances  are,'  observed 
Isidore  Bamberger,  fixing  his  sharp  eyes  on  the  famous 
doctor's  face.  'He  used  to  be  my  private  secretary.' 

He  might  just  as  well  have  examined  the  back  of  the 
doctor's  head. 

'He's  not  a  patient  of  mine/  Sir  Jasper  said.  'I'm 
only  one  of  the  visiting  doctors  at  Dr.  Bream's  establish- 


CHAP,  xiv  THE  PRIMADONNA  319 

ment.  I  don't  go  there  unless  he  sends  for  me,  and  I 
keep  no  notes  of  his  cases.  You  will  have  to  ask  him. 
If  I  am  not  mistaken  his  hours  are  from  ten  to  twelve. 
And  now'  —  Sir  Jasper  rose  —  'as  I  can  only  con 
gratulate  you  on  your  splendid  health  —  no,  I  really 
cannot  prescribe  anything  —  literally  nothing ' 

Isidore  Bamberger  had  left  three  patients  in  the 
waiting-room  and  was  obliged  to  go  away,  as  his  '  splen 
did  health'  did  not  afford  him  the  slightest  pretext  for 
asking  more  questions.  He  deposited  his  two  guineas 
on  the  mantelpiece  neatly  wrapped  in  a  bit  of  note- 
paper,  while  Sir  Jasper  examined  the  handle  of  the 
door  with  a  stony  gaze,  and  he  said  'good  morning'  as 
he  went  out. 

'Good  morning/  answered  Sir  Jasper,  and  as  Mr. 
Bamberger  crossed  the  threshold  the  single  clanging 
stroke  of  the  doctor's  bell  was  heard,  summoning  the 
next  patient. 

The  American  man  of  business  was  puzzled,  for  he 
was  a  good  judge  of  humanity,  and  was  sure  that  when 
the  Englishman  said  that  he  had  never  seen  Van  Torp 
he  was  telling  the  literal  truth.  Mr.  Bamberger  was 
convinced  that  there  had  been  some  agreement  between 
them  to  make  it  impossible  for  any  one  to  see  Feist. 
He  knew  the  latter  well,  however,  and  had  great  con 
fidence  in  his  remarkable  power  of  holding  his  tongue, 
even  when  under  the  influence  of  drink. 

When  Tiberius  had  to  choose  between  two  men 
equally  well  fitted  for  a  post  of  importance,  he  had 
them  both  to  supper,  and  chose  the  one  who  was  least 


320  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiv 

affected  by  wine,  not  at  all  for  the  sake  of  seeing  the 
match,  but  on  the  excellent  principle  that  in  an  age 
when  heavy  drinking  was  the  rule  the  man  who  could 
swallow  the  largest  quantity  without  becoming  talka 
tive  was  the  one  to  be  best  trusted  with  a  secret;  and 
the  fact  that  Tiberius  himself  had  the  strongest  head  in 
the  Empire  made  him  a  good  judge. 

Bamberger,  on  the  same  principle,  believed  that 
Charles  Feist  would  hold  his  tongue,  and  he  also  felt 
tolerably  sure  that  the  former  secretary  had  no  com 
promising  papers  in  his  possession,  for  his  memory  had 
always  been  extraordinary.  Feist  had  formerly  been 
able  to  carry  in  his  mind  a  number  of  letters  which 
Bamberger  'talked  off'  to  him  consecutively  without 
even  using  shorthand,  and  could  type  them  afterwards 
with  unfailing  accuracy.  It  was  therefore  scarcely 
likely  that  he  kept  notes  of  the  articles  he  wrote  about 
Van  Torp. 

But  his  employer  did  not  know  that  Feist's  memory 
was  failing  from  drink,  and  that  he  no  longer  trusted 
his  marvellous  faculty.  Van  Torp  had  sequestrated 
him  and  shut  him  up,  Bamberger  believed;  but  neither 
Van  Torp  nor  any  one  else  would  get  anything  out  of 
him. 

And  if  any  one  made  him  talk,  what  great  harm 
would  be  done,  after  all?  It  was  not  to  be  supposed 
that  such  a  man  as  Isidore  Bamberger  had  trusted  only 
to  his  own  keenness  in  collecting  evidence,  or  to  a  few 
pencilled  notes  as  a  substitute  for  the  principal  witness 
himself,  when  an  accident  might  happen  at  any  moment 


CHAP.  XIV  THE  PRIMADONNA  321 

to  a  man  who  led  such  a  life.  The  case  for  the  prosecu 
tion  had  been  quietly  prepared  during  several  months 
past,  and  the  evidence  that  was  to  send  Rufus  Van  Torp 
to  execution,  or  to  an  asylum  for  the  Criminal  Insane  for 
life,  was  in  the  safe  of  Isidore  Bamberger's  lawyer  in 
New  York,  unless,  at  that  very  moment,  it  was  already 
in  the  hands  of  the  Public  Prosecutor.  A  couple  of 
cables  would  do  the  rest  at  any  time,  and  in  a  few 
hours.  In  murder  cases,  the  extradition  treaty  works 
as  smoothly  as  the  telegraph  itself.  The  American 
authorities  would  apply  to  the  English  Home  Secretary, 
the  order  would  go  to  Scotland  Yard,  and  Van  Torp 
would  be  arrested  immediately  and  taken  home  by  the 
first  steamer,  to  be  tried  in  New  York. 

Six  months  earlier  he  might  have  pleaded  insanity 
with  a  possible  chance,  but  in  the  present  state  of  feel 
ing  the  plea  would  hardly  be  admitted.  A  man  who 
has  been  held  up  to  public  execration  in  the  press  for 
weeks,  and  whom  no  one  attempts  to  defend,  is  in  a 
bad  case  if  a  well-grounded  accusation  of  murder  is 
brought  against  him  at  such  a  moment;  and  Isidore 
Bamberger  firmly  believed  in  the  truth  of  the  charge 
and  in  the  validity  of  the  evidence. 

He  consoled  himself  with  these  considerations,  and 
with  the  reflection  that  Feist  was  actually  safer  where 
he  was,  and  less  liable  to  accident  than  if  he  were  at 
large.  Mr.  Bamberger  walked  slowly  down  Harley 
Street  to  Cavendish  Square,  with  his  head  low  between 
his  shoulders,  his  hat  far  back  on  his  head,  his  eyes  on 
the  pavement,  and  the  shiny  toes  of  his  patent  leather 


322  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  xnr 

boots  turned  well  out.  His  bowed  legs  were  encased 
in  loose  black  trousers,  and  had  as  many  angles  as  the 
forepaws  of  a  Dachshund  or  a  Dandie  Dinmont.  The 
peculiarities  of  his  ungainly  gait  and  figure  were  even 
more  apparent  than  usual,  and  as  he  walked  he  swung 
his  long  arms,  that  ended  in  large  black  gloves  which 
looked  as  if  they  were  stuffed  with  sawdust. 

Yet  there  was  something  in  his  face  that  set  him  far 
beyond  and  above  ridicule,  and  the  passers-by  saw  it 
and  wondered  gravely  who  and  what  this  man  in  black 
might  be,  and  what  great  misfortune  and  still  greater 
passion  had  moulded  the  tragic  mark  upon  his  features; 
and  none  of  those  who  looked  at  him  glanced  at  his 
heavy,  ill-made  figure,  or  noticed  his  clumsy  walk,  or 
realised  that  he  was  most  evidently  a  typical  German 
Jew,  who  perhaps  kept  an  antiquity  shop  in  Wardour 
Street,  and  had  put  on  his  best  coat  to  call  on  a  rich 
collector  in  the  West  End. 

Those  who  saw  him  only  saw  his  face  and  went  on, 
feeling  that  they  had  passed  near  something  greater 
and  sadder  and  stronger  than  anything  in  their  own 
lives  could  ever  be. 

But  he  went  on  his  way,  unconscious  of  the  men  and 
women  he  met,  and  not  thinking  where  he  went,  cross 
ing  Oxford  Street  and  then  turning  down  Regent  Street 
and  following  it  to  Piccadilly  and  the  Haymarket. 
Just  before  he  reached  the  theatre,  he  slackened  his 
pace  and  looked  about  him,  as  if  he  were  waking  up; 
and  there,  in  the  cross  street,  just  behind  the  theatre, 
he  saw  a  telegraph  office 


CHAP.  XIV  THE  PRIMADONNA  323 

He  entered,  pushed  his  hat  still  a  little  farther  back, 
and  wrote  a  cable  message.  It  was  as  short  as  it  could 
be,  for  it  consisted  of  one  word  only  besides  the  address, 
and  that  one  word  had  only  two  letters : 

'Go.' 

That  was  all,  and  there  was  nothing  mysterious  about 
the  syllable,  for  almost  any  one  would  understand  that 
it  was  used  as  in  starting  a  footrace,  and  meant,  i  Begin 
operations  at  once!'  It  was  the  word  agreed  upon 
between  Isidore  Bamberger  and  his  lawyer.  The  latter 
had  been  allowed  all  the  latitude  required  in  such  a 
case,  for  he  had  instructions  to  lay  the  evidence  before 
the  District  Attorney-General  without  delay,  if  any 
thing  happened  to  make  immediate  action  seem  advisa 
ble.  In  any  event,  he  was  to  do  so  on  receiving  the 
message  which  had  now  been  sent. 

The  evidence  consisted,  in  the  first  place,  of  certain 
irrefutable  proofs  that  Miss  Bamberger  had  not  died 
from  shock,  but  had  been  killed  by  a  thin  and  extremely 
sharp  instrument  with  which  she  had  been  stabbed  in 
the  back.  Isidore  Bamberger's  own  doctor  had  satis 
fied  himself  of  this,  and  had  signed  his  statement  under 
oath,  and  Bamberger  had  instantly  thought  of  a  certain 
thin  steel  letter-opener  which  Van  Torp  always  had  in 
his  pocket. 

Next  came  the  affidavit  of  Paul  Griggs.  The  witness 
knew  the  Opera  House  well.  Had  been  in  the  stalls 
on  the  night  in  question.  Had  not  moved  from  his 
seat  till  the  performance  was  over,  and  had  been  one 
of  the  last  to  get  out  into  the  corridor.  There 


324  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiv 

was  a  small  door  in  the  corridor  on  the  south  side 
which  was  generally  shut.  It  opened  upon  a  passage 
communicating  with  the  part  of  the  building  that  is 
let  for  business  offices.  Witness's  attention  had  been 
attracted  by  part  of  a  red  silk  dress  which  lay  on  the 
floor  outside  the  door,  the  latter  being  ajar.  Suspecting 
an  accident,  witness  opened  door,  found  Miss  Bamberger, 
and  carried  her  to  manager's  room  not  far  off.  On 
reaching  home  had  found  stains  of  blood  on  his  hands. 
Had  said  nothing  of  this,  because  he  had  seen  notice 
of  the  lady's  death  from  shock  in  next  morning's  paper. 
Was  nevertheless  convinced  that  blood  must  have  been 
on  her  dress. 

The  murder  was  therefore  proved.  But  the  victim 
had  not  been  robbed  of  her  jewellery,  which  demon 
strated  that,  if  the  crime  had  not  been  committed  by  a 
lunatic,  the  motive  for  it  must  have  been  personal. 

With  regard  to  identity  of  the  murderer,  Charles 
Feist  deposed  that  on  the  night  in  question  he  had 
entered  the  Opera  late,  having  only  an  admission  to 
the  standing  room,  that  he  was  close  to  one  of  the  doors 
when  the  explosion  took  place  and  had  been  one  of  the 
first  to  leave  the  house.  The  emergency  lights  in  the 
corridors  were  on  a  separate  circuit,  but  had  been  also 
momentarily  extinguished.  They  were  up  again  before 
those  in  the  house.  The  crowd  had  at  once  become 
jammed  in  the  doorways,  so  that  people  got  out  much 
more  slowly  than  might  have  been  expected.  Many 
actually  fell  in  the  exits  and  were  trampled  on.  Then 
Madame  Cordova  had  begun  to  sing  in  the  dark,  and 


CHAP.  XIV  THE   PRIMADONNA  325 

the  panic  had  ceased  in  a  few  seconds.  The  witness 
did  not  think  that  more  than  three  hundred  people 
altogether  had  got  out  through  the  several  doors.  He 
himself  had  at  once  made  for  the  main  entrance.  A 
few  persons  rushed  past  him  in  the  dark,  descending 
the  stairs  from  the  boxes.  One  or  two  fell  on  the  steps. 
Just  as  the  emergency  lights  went  up  again,  witness 
saw  a  young  lady  in  a  red  silk  dress  fall,  but  did  not  see 
her  face  distinctly;  he  was  certain  that  she  had  a  short 
string  of  pearls  round  her  throat.  They  gleamed  in 
the  light  as  she  fell.  She  was  instantly  lifted  to  her  feet 
by  Mr.  Rufus  Van  Torp,  who  must  have  been  following 
her  closely.  She  seemed  to  have  hurt  herself  a  little, 
and  he  almost  carried  her  down  the  corridor  in  the  direc 
tion  of  the  carriage  lobby  on  the  Thirty-Eighth  Street 
side.  The  two  then  disappeared  through  a  door.  The 
witness  would  swear  to  the  door,  and  he  described  its 
position  accurately.  It  seemed  to  have  been  left  ajar, 
but  there  was  no  light  on  the  other  side  of  it.  The  wit 
ness  did  not  know  where  the  door  led  to.  He  had  often 
wondered.  It  was  not  for  the  use  of  the  public.  He 
frequently  went  to  the  Opera  and  was  perfectly  familiar 
with  the  corridors.  It  was  behind  this  door  that  Paul 
Griggs  had  found  Miss  Bamberger.  Questioned  as  to 
a  possible  motive  for  the  murder,  the  witness  stated  that 
Rufus  Van  Torp  was  known  to  have  shown  homicidal 
tendencies,  though  otherwise  perfectly  sane.  In  his 
early  youth  he  had  lived  four  years  on  a  cattle-ranch 
as  a  cow-puncher,  and  had  undoubtedly  killed  two  men 
during  that  time.  Witness  had  been  private  secretary 


326  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XIV 

to  his  partner,  Mr.  Isidore  Bamberger,  and  while  so 
employed  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  fired  a  revolver  at  him  in 
his  private  office  in  a  fit  of  passion  about  a  message 
witness  was  sent  to  deliver.  Two  clerks  in  a  neighbour 
ing  room  had  heard  the  shot.  Believing  Mr.  Van  Torp 
to  be  mad,  witness  had  said  nothing  at  the  time,  but 
had  left  Mr.  Bamberger  soon  afterwards.  It  was  always 
said  that,  several  years  ago,  on  board  of  his  steam  yacht, 
Mr.  Van  Torp  had  once  violently  pulled  a  friend  who 
was  on  board  out  of  his  berth  at  two  in  the  morning,  and 
had  dragged  him  on  deck,  saying  that  he  must  throw 
him  overboard  and  drown  him,  as  the  only  way  of  sav 
ing  his  soul.  The  watch  on  deck  had  had  great  difficulty 
in  overpowering  Mr.  Van  Torp,  who  was  very  strong. 
With  regard  to  the  late  Miss  Bamberger  the  witness 
thought  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  killed  her  to  get  rid  of 
her,  because  she  was  in  possession  of  facts  that  would 
ruin  him  if  they  were  known  and  because  she  had 
threatened  to  reveal  them  to  her  father.  If  she  had 
done  so,  Van  Torp  would  have  been  completely  in  his 
partner's  power.  Mr.  Bamberger  could  have  made  a 
beggar  of  him  as  the  only  alternative  to  penal  servitude. 
Questioned  as  to  the  nature  of  this  information,  witness 
said  that  it  concerned  the  explosion,  which  had  been 
planned  by  Van  Torp  for  his  own  purposes.  Either  in 
a  moment  of  expansion,  under  the  influence  of  the  drug 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  taking,  or  else  in  real  anxiety  for 
her  safety,  he  had  told  Miss  Bamberger  that  the  explo 
sion  would  take  place,  warning  her  to  remain  in  her 
home,  which  was  situated  on  the  Riverside  Drive,  very 


CHAP.  XIV  THE  PRIMADONNA  327 

far  from  the  scene  of  the  disaster.  She  had  undoubtedly 
been  so  horrified  that  she  had  thereupon  insisted  upon 
dissolving  her  engagement  to  marry  him,  and  had 
threatened  to  inform  her  father  of  the  horrible  plot. 
She  had  never  really  wished  to  marry  Van  Torp,  but 
had  accepted  him  in  deference  to  her  father's  wishes. 
He  was  known  to  be  devoting  himself  at  that  very  time 
to  a  well-known  primadonna  engaged  at  the  Metropoli 
tan  Opera,  and  Miss  Bamberger  probably  had  some 
suspicion  of  this.  Witness  said  the  motive  seemed  suffi 
cient,  considering  that  the  accused  had  already  twice 
taken  human  life.  His  choice  lay  between  killing  her 
and  falling  into  the  power  of  his  partner.  He  had 
injured  Mr.  Bamberger,  as  was  well  known,  and  Mr. 
Bamberger  was  a  resentful  man. 

The  latter  part  of  Charles  Feist's  deposition  was 
certainly  more  in  the  nature  of  an  argument  than  of 
evidence  pure  and  simple,  and  it  might  not  be  admitted 
in  court;  but  Isidore  Bamberger  had  instructed  his 
lawyer,  and  the  Public  Prosecutor  would  say  it  all,  and 
more  also,  and  much  better;  and  public  opinion  was 
roused  all  over  the  United  States  against  the  Nickel 
Tyrant,  as  Van  Torp  was  now  called. 

In  support  of  the  main  point  there  was  a  short  note 
to  Miss  Bamberger  in  Van  Torp's  handwriting,  which 
had  afterwards  been  found  on  her  dressing-table.  It 
must  have  arrived  before  she  had  gone  out  to  dinner. 
It  contained  a  final  and  urgent  entreaty  that  she  would 
not  go  to  the  Opera,  nor  leave  the  house  that  evening, 
and  was  signed  with  Van  Torp's  initials  only,  but  no 


328  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xiv 

one  who  knew  his  handwriting  would  be  likely  to  doubt 
that  the  note  was  genuine. 

There  were  some  other  scattered  pieces  of  evidence 
which  fitted  the  rest  very  well.  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  not 
been  seen  at  his  own  house,  nor  in  any  club,  nor  down 
town,  after  he  had  gone  out  on  Wednesday  afternoon, 
until  the  following  Friday,  when  he  had  returned  to 
make  his  final  arrangements  for  sailing  the  next  morn 
ing.  Bamberger  had  employed  a  first-rate  detective, 
but  only  one,  to  find  out  all  that  could  be  discovered 
about  Van  Torp's  movements.  The  millionaire  had 
been  at  the  house  on  Riverside  Drive  early  in  the  after 
noon  to  see  Miss  Bamberger,  as  he  had  told  Margaret 
on  board  the  steamer,  but  Bamberger  had  not  seen  his 
daughter  after  that  till  she  was  brought  home  dead, 
for  he  had  been  detained  by  an  important  meeting  at 
which  he  presided,  and  knowing  that  she  was  dining 
out  to  go  to  the  theatre  he  had  telephoned  that  he 
would  dine  at  his  club.  He  himself  had  tried  to  tele 
phone  to  Van  Torp  later  in  the  evening  but  had  not  been 
able  to  find  him,  and  had  not  seen  him  till  Friday. 

This  was  the  substance  of  the  evidence  which  Bam- 
berger's  lawyer  and  the  detective  would  lay  before  the 
District  Attorney-General  on  receiving  the  cable. 


CHAPTER  XV 

WHEN  Lady  Maud  stopped  at  Margaret's  house  on  her 
way  to  the  theatre  she  had  been  dining  at  Princes' 
with  a  small  party  of  people,  amongst  whom  Paul 
Griggs  had  found  himself,  and  as  there  was  no  formality 
to  hinder  her  from  choosing  her  own  place  she  had  sat 
down  next  to  him.  The  table  was  large  and  round,  the 
sixty  or  seventy  other  diners  in  the  room  made  a  certain 
amount  of  noise,  so  that  it  was  easy  to  talk  in  under 
tones  while  the  conversation  of  the  others  was  general. 
The  veteran  man  of  letters  was  an  old  acquaintance 
of  Lady  Maud's;  and  as  she  made  no  secret  of  her 
friendship  with  Rufus  Van  Torp,  it  was  not  surprising 
that  Griggs  should  warn  her  of  the  latter 's  danger.  As 
he  had  expected  when  he  left  New  York,  he  had  received 
a  visit  from  a  ' high-class'  detective,  who  came  to  find 
out  what  he  knew  about  Miss  Bamberger's  death. 
This  is  a  bad  world,  as  we  all  know,  and  it  is  made  so 
by  a  good  many  varieties  of  bad  people.  As  Mr.  Van 
Torp  had  said  to  Logo  the  ti,  '  different  kinds  of  cats  have 
different  kinds  of  ways,'  and  the  various  classes  of 
criminals  are  pursued  by  various  classes  of  detectives. 
Many  are  ex-policemen,  and  make  up  the  pack  that 
hunts  the  well-dressed  lady  shop-lifter,  the  gentle  pick 
pocket,  the  agile  burglar,  the  Paris  Apache,  and  the 

329 


330  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xv 

common  murderer  of  the  Bill  Sykes  type;  they  are  good 
dogs  in  their  way,  if  you  do  not  press  them,  though 
they  are  rather  apt  to  give  tongue.  But  when  they 
are  not  ex-policemen,  they  are  always  ex-something 
else,  since  there  is  no  college  for  detectives,  and  it  is  not 
probable  that  any  young  man  ever  deliberately  began 
life  with  the  intention  of  becoming  one.  Edgar  Poe 
invented  the  amateur  detective,  and  modern  writers 
have  developed  him  till  he  is  a  familiar  and  always 
striking  figure  in  fiction  and  on  the  stage.  Whether  he 
really  exists  or  not  does  not  matter.  I  have  heard  a 
great  living  painter  ask  the  question:  What  has  art 
to  do  with  truth?  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  Paul  Griggs, 
who  had  seen  a  vast  deal,  had  never  met  an  amateur 
detective;  and  my  own  impression  is  that  if  one  existed 
he  would  instantly  turn  himself  into  a  professional 
because  it  would  be  so  very  profitable. 

The  one  who  called  on  Griggs  in  his  lodgings  wrote 
1  barrister-at-law '  after  his  name,  and  had  the  right  to 
do  so.  He  had  languished  in  chambers,  briefless  and 
half  starving,  either  because  he  had  no  talent  for  the 
bar,  or  because  he  had  failed  to  marry  a  solicitor's 
daughter.  He  himself  was  inclined  to  attribute  his 
want  of  success  to  the  latter  cause.  But  he  had  not 
wasted  his  time,  though  he  was  more  than  metaphori 
cally  threadbare,  and  his  waist  would  have  made  a  sen 
sation  at  a  staymaker's.  He  had  watched  and  pondered 
on  many  curious  cases  for  years;  and  one  day,  when  a 
' high-class'  criminal  had  baffled  the  police  and  had 
well-nigh  confounded  the  Attorney-General  and  proved 


CHAP,  xv  THE  PRIMADONNA  331 

himself  a  saint,  the  starving  barrister  had  gone  quietly 
to  work  in  his  own  way,  had  discovered  the  truth,  had 
taken  his  information  to  the  prosecution,  had  been  the 
means  of  sending  the  high-class  one  to  penal  servitude, 
and  had  covered  himself  with  glory:  since  when  he  had 
grown  sleek  and  well-liking,  if  not  rich,  as  a  professional 
detective. 

Griggs  had  been  perfectly  frank,  and  had  told  without 
hesitation  all  he  could  remember  of  the  circumstances. 
In  answer  to  further  questions  he  said  he  knew  Mr.  Van 
Torp  tolerably  well,  and  had  not  seen  him  in  the  Opera 
House  on  the  evening  of  the  murder.  He  did  not  know 
whether  the  financier's  character  was  violent.  If  it 
was,  he  had  never  seen  any  notable  manifestation  of 
temper.  Did  he  know  that  Mr.  Van  Torp  had  once  lived 
on  a  ranch,  and  had  killed  two  men  in  a  shooting  affray? 
Yes,  he  had  heard  so,  but  the  shooting  might  have  been 
in  self-defence.  Did  he  know  anything  about  the  blow 
ing  up  of  the  works  of  which  Van  Torp  had  been  accused 
in  the  papers?  Nothing  more  than  the  public  knew. 
Or  anything  about  the  circumstances  of  Van  Torp's 
engagement  to  Miss  Bamberger?  Nothing  whatever. 
Would  he  read  the  statement  and  sign  his  name  to  it? 
He  would,  and  he  did. 

Griggs  thought  the  young  man  acted  more  like  an 
ordinary  lawyer  than  a  detective,  and  said  so  with  a 
smile. 

'Oh  no/  was  the  quiet  answer.  'In  my  business  it's 
quite  as  important  to  recognise  honesty  as  it  is  to  de 
tect  fraud.  That's  all.' 


332  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xv 

For  his  own  part  the  man  of  letters  did  not  care  a 
straw  whether  Van  Torp  had  committed  the  murder 
or  not,  but  he  thought  it  very  unlikely.  On  general 
principles,  he  thought  the  law  usually  found  out  the 
truth  in  the  end,  and  he  was  ready  to  do  what  he  could  to 
help  it.  He  held  his  tongue,  and  told  no  one  about  the 
detective's  visit,  because  he  had  no  intimate  friend  in 
England;  partly,  too,  because  he  wished  to  keep  his 
name  out  of  what  was  now  called  '  the  Van  Torp  scandal.' 

He  would  never  have  alluded  to  the  matter  if  he  had 
not  accidentally  found  himself  next  to  Lady  Maud  at 
dinner.  She  had  always  liked  him  and  trusted  him, 
and  he  liked  her  and  her  father.  On  that  evening  she 
spoke  of  Van  Torp  within  the  first  ten  minutes,  and 
expressed  her  honest  indignation  at  the  general  attack 
made  on  'the  kindest  man  that  ever  lived.'  Then 
Griggs  felt  that  she  had  a  sort  of  right  to  know  what 
was  being  done  to  bring  against  her  friend  an  accusa 
tion  of  murder,  for  he  believed  Van  Torp  innocent,  and 
was  sure  that  Lady  Maud  would  warn  him;  but  it  was 
for  her  sake  only  that  Griggs  spoke,  because  he  pitied 
her. 

She  took  it  more  calmly  than  he  had  expected,  but 
she  grew  a  little  paler,  and  that  look  came  into  her 
eyes  which  Margaret  and  Logotheti  saw  there  an  hour 
afterwards;  and  presently  she  asked  Griggs  if  he  too 
would  join  the  week-end  party  at  Cray  the  w,  telling  him 
that  Van  Torp  would  be  there.  Griggs  accepted,  after 
a  moment's  hesitation. 

She  was  not  quite  sure  why  she  had  so  frankly  ap- 


CHAP.  XV  THE  PRIMADONNA  333 

pealed  to  Logotheti  for  help  when  they  left  Margaret's 
house  together,  but  she  was  not  disappointed  in  his 
answer.  He  was  'exotic/  as  she  had  said  of  him;  he 
was  hopelessly  in  love  with  Cordova,  who  disliked  Van 
Torp,  and  he  could  not  be  expected  to  take  much  trouble 
for  any  other  woman;  she  had  not  the  very  slightest 
claim  on  him.  Yet  she  had  asked  him  to  help  her  in  a 
way  which  might  be  any  tiling  but  lawful,  even  supposing 
that  it  did  not  involve  positive  cruelty. 

For  she  had  not  been  married  to  Leven  four  years 
without  learning  something  of  Asiatic  practices,  and 
she  knew  that  there  were  more  means  of  making  a  man 
tell  a  secret  than  by  persuasion  or  wily  cross-examina 
tion.  It  was  all  very  well  to  keep  within  the  bounds  of 
the  law  and  civilisation,  but  where  the  whole  existence 
of  her  best  friend  was  at  stake,  Lady  Maud  was  much 
too  simple,  primitive,  and  feminine  to  be  hampered  by 
any  such  artificial  considerations,  and  she  turned 
naturally  to  a  man  who  did  not  seem  to  be  a  slave  to 
them  either.  She  had  not  quite  dared  to  hope  that  he 
would  help  her,  and  his  readiness  to  do  so  was  something 
of  a  surprise;  but  she  would  have  been  astonished  if  he 
had  been  in  the  least  shocked  at  the  implied  suggestion 
of  deliberately  torturing  Charles  Feist  till  he  revealed 
the  truth  about  the  murder.  She  only  felt  a  little  un 
comfortable  when  she  reflected  that  Feist  might  not 
know  it  after  all,  whereas  she  had  boldly  told  Logotheti 
that  he  did. 

If  the  Greek  had  hesitated  for  a  few  seconds  before 
giving  his  answer,  it  was  not  that  he  was  doubtful 


334  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xv 

of  his  own  willingness  to  do  what  she  wished,  but  be 
cause  he  questioned  his  power  to  do  it.  The  request 
itself  appealed  to  the  Oriental's  love  of  excitement  and 
to  his  taste  for  the  uncommon  in  life.  If  he  had  not 
sometimes  found  occasions  for  satisfying  both,  he  could 
not  have  lived  in  Paris  and  London  at  all,  but  would 
have  gone  back  to  Constantinople,  which  is  the  last 
refuge  of  romance  in  Europe,  the  last  hiding-place  of 
medieval  adventure,  the  last  city  of  which  a  new  De 
cameron  of  tales  could  still  be  told,  and  might  still  be 
true. 

Lady  Maud  had  good  nerves,  and  she  watched  the 
play  with  her  friends  and  talked  between  the  acts,  very 
much  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  except  that  she  was 
pale  and  there  was  that  look  in  her  eyes;  but  only  Paul 
Griggs  noticed  it,  because  he  had  a  way  of  watching 
the  small  changes  of  expression  that  may  mean  tragedy, 
but  more  often  signify  indigestion,  or  too  much  strong 
tea,  or  a  dun's  letter,  or  a  tight  shoe,  or  a  bad  hand  at 
bridge,  or  the  presence  of  a  bore  in  the  room,  or  the  flat 
failure  of  expected  pleasure,  or  sauce  spilt  on  a  new 
gown  by  a  rival's  butler,  or  being  left  out  of  something 
small  and  smart,  or  any  of  those  minor  aches  that  are 
the  inheritance  of  the  social  flesh,  and  drive  women 
perfectly  mad  while  they  last. 

But  Griggs  knew  that  none  of  these  troubles  afflicted 
Lady  Maud,  and  when  he  spoke  to  her  now  and  then, 
between  the  acts,  she  felt  his  sympathy  for  her  in  every 
word  and  inflection. 

She  was  glad  when  the  evening  was  over  and  she  was 


CHAP,  xv  THE   PRIMADONNA  335 

at  home  in  her  dressing-room,  and  there  was  no  more 
effort  to  be  made  till  the  next  day.  But  even  alone, 
she  did  not  behave  or  look  very  differently;  she  twisted 
up  her  thick  brown  hair  herself,  as  methodically  as  ever, 
and  laid  out  the  black  velvet  gown  on  the  lounge  after 
shaking  it  out,  so  that  it  should  be  creased  as  little  as 
possible;  but  when  she  was  ready  to  go  to  bed  she  put 
on  a  dressing-gown  and  sat  down  at  her  table  to  write 
to  Rufus  Van  Tor  p. 

The  letter  was  begun  and  she  had  written  half  a 
dozen  lines  when  she  laid  down  the  pen,  to  unlock  a 
small  drawer  from  which  she  took  an  old  blue  envelope 
that  had  never  been  sealed,  though  it  was  a  good  deal 
the  worse  for  wear.  There  was  a  photograph  in  it, 
which  she  laid  before  her  on  the  letter;  and  she  looked 
down  at  it  steadily,  resting  her  elbows  on  the  table  and 
her  forehead  and  temples  in  her  hands. 

It  was  a  snapshot  photograph  of  a  young  officer  in 
khaki  and  puttees,  not  very  well  taken,  and  badly 
mounted  on  a  bit  of  white  pasteboard  that  might  have 
been  cut  from  a  bandbox  with  a  penknife;  but  it  was 
all  she  had,  and  there  could  never  be  another. 

She  looked  at  it  a  long  time. 

'You  understand,  dear/  she  said  at  last,  very  low; 
'you  understand.' 

She  put  it  away  again  and  locked  the  drawer  before 
she  went  on  with  her  letter  to  Van  Torp.  It  was  easy 
enough  to  tell  him  what  she  had  learned  about  Feist 
from  Logotheti ;  it  was  even  possible  that  he  had  found 
it  out  for  himself,  and  had  not  taken  the  trouble  to 


336  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xv 

inform  her  of  the  fact.  Apart  from  the  approval  that 
friendship  inspires,  she  had  always  admired  the  cool 
discernment  of  events  which  he  showed  when  great 
things  were  at  stake.  But  it  was  one  thing,  she  now 
told  him,  to  be  indifferent  to  the  stupid  attacks  of  the 
press,  it  would  be  quite  another  to  allow  himself  to  be 
accused  of  murder;  the  time  had  come  when  he  must 
act,  and  without  delay;  there  was  a  limit  beyond 
which  indifference  became  culpable  apathy;  it  wras 
clear  enough  now,  she  said,  that  all  these  attacks  on 
him  had  been  made  to  ruin  him  in  the  estimation  of 
the  public  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  before  striking 
the  first  blow,  as  he  himself  had  guessed;  Griggs  was 
surely  not  an  alarmist,  and  Griggs  said  confidently  that 
Van  Torp's  enemies  meant  business;  without  doubt,  a 
mass  of  evidence  had  been  carefully  got  together  dur 
ing  the  past  three  months,  and  it  was  pretty  sure  that 
an  attempt  would  be  made  before  long  to  arrest  him; 
would  he  do  nothing  to  make  such  an  outrage  impos 
sible?  She  had  not  forgotten,  she  could  never  forget, 
what  she  owed  him,  but  on  his  side  he  owed  something 
to  her,  and  to  the  great  friendship  that  bound  them 
to  each  other.  Who  was  this  man  Feist,  and  who  was 
behind  him?  She  did  not  know  why  she  was  so  sure 
that  he  knew  the  truth,  supposing  that  there  had  really 
been  a  murder,  but  her  instinct  told  her  so. 

Lady  Maud  was  not  gifted  with  much  power  of  writ 
ing,  for  she  was  not  clever  at  books,  or  with  pen  and 
ink,  but  she  wrote  her  letter  with  deep  conviction  and 
striking  clearness.  The  only  point  of  any  importance 


CHAP.  XV  THE   PRIMADONNA  337 

which  she  did  not  mention  was  that  Logotheti  had  prom 
ised  to  help  her,  and  she  did  not  write  of  that  because 
she  was  not  really  sure  that  he  could  do  anything, 
though  she  was  convinced  that  he  would  try.  She  was 
very  anxious.  She  was  horrified  when  she  thought  of 
what  might  happen  if  nothing  were  done.  She  entreated 
Van  Torp  to  answer  that  he  would  take  steps  to  defend 
himself;  and  that,  if  possible,  he  would  come  to  town 
so  that  they  might  consult  together. 

She  finished  her  letter  and  went  to  bed;  but  her  good 
nerves  failed  her  for  once,  and  it  was  a  long  time  before 
she  could  get  to  sleep.  It  was  absurd,  of  course,  but 
she  remembered  every  case  she  had  ever  heard  of  in 
which  innocent  men  had  been  convicted  of  crimes  they 
had  not  committed  and  had  suffered  for  them;  and  in  a 
hideous  instant,  between  waking  and  dozing,  she  saw 
Rufus  Van  Torp  hanged  before  her  eyes. 

The  impression  was  so  awful  that  she  started  from  her 
pillow  with  a  cry  and  turned  up  the  electric  lamp.  It 
was  not  till  the  light  flooded  the  room  that  the  image 
quite  faded  away  and  she  could  let  her  head  rest  on  the 
pillow  again,  and  even  then  her  heart  was  beating 
violently,  as  it  had  only  beaten  once  in  her  life  before 
that  night. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

SIR  JASPER  THRELFALL  did  not  know  how  long  it  would 
be  before  Mr.  Feist  could  safely  be  discharged  from  the 
establishment  in  which  Logotheti  had  so  kindly  placed 
him.  Dr.  Bream  said  'it  was  as  bad  a  case  of  chronic 
alcoholism  as  he  often  saw.'  What  has  grammar  to  do 
with  the  treatment  of  the  nerves?  Mr.  Feist  said  he  did 
not  want  to  be  cured  of  chronic  alcoholism,  and  de 
manded  that  he  should  be  let  out  at  once.  Dr.  Bream 
answered  that  it  was  against  his  principles  to  discharge 
a  patient  half  cured.  Mr.  Feist  retorted  that  it  was  a 
violation  of  personal  liberty  to  cure  a  man  against  his 
will.  The  physician  smiled  kindly  at  a  view  he  heard 
expressed  every  day,  and  which  the  law  shared,  though 
it  might  not  be  very  ready  to  support  it.  Physically, 
Mr.  Feist  was  afraid  of  Dr.  Bream,  who  had  played  foot 
ball  for  Guy's  Hospital  and  had  the  complexion  of  a 
healthy  baby  and  a  quiet  eye.  So  the  patient  changed 
his  tone,  and  whined  for  something  to  calm  his  agitated 
nerves.  One  teaspoonful  of  whisky  was  all  he  begged 
for,  and  he  promised  not  to  ask  for  it  to-morrow  if  he 
might  have  it  to-day.  The  doctor  was  obdurate  about 
spirits,  but  felt  his  pulse,  examined  the  pupils  of  his 
eyes,  and  promised  him  a  calming  hypodermic  in  an 
hour.  It  was  too  soon  after  breakfast,  he  said.  Mr. 

338 


CHAP,  xvi  THE   PRIMADONNA  339 

Feist  only  once  attempted  to  use  violence,  and  then 
two  large  men  came  into  the  room,  as  quiet  and  healthy 
as  the  doctor  himself,  and  gently  but  firmly  put  him  to 
bed,  tucking  him  up  in  such  an  extraordinary  way  that 
he  found  it  quite  impossible  to  move  or  to  get  his  hands 
out;  and  Dr.  Bream,  smiling  with  exasperating  calm, 
stuck  a  needle  into  his  shoulder,  after  which  he  presently 
fell  asleep. 

He  had  been  drinking  hard  for  years,  so  that  it  was  a 
very  bad  case;  and  besides,  he  seemed  to  have  some 
thing  on  his  mind,  which  made  it  worse. 

Logotheti  came  to  see  him  now,  and  took  a  vast  deal 
of  trouble  to  be  agreeable.  At  his  first  visit  Feist  flew 
into  a  rage  and  accused  the  Greek  of  having  kidnapped 
him  and  shut  him  up  in  a  prison,  where  he  was  treated 
like  a  lunatic;  but  to  this  Logotheti  was  quite  indifferent; 
he  only  shook  his  head  rather  sadly,  and  offered  Feist  a 
very  excellent  cigarette,  such  as  it  was  quite  impossible 
to  buy,  even  in  London.  After  a  little  hesitation  the 
patient  took  it,  and  the  effect  was  very  soothing  to  his 
temper.  Indeed  it  was  wonderful,  for  in  less  than  two 
minutes  his  features  relaxed,  his  eyes  became  quiet, 
and  he  actually  apologised  for  having  spoken  so  rudely. 
Logotheti  had  been  kindness  itself,  he  said,  had  saved 
his  life  at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  going  to  cut 
his  throat,  and  had  been  in  all  respects  the  good  Samari 
tan.  The  cigarette  was  perfectly  delicious.  It  was 
about  the  best  smoke  he  had  enjoyed  since  he  had  left 
the  States,  he  said.  He  wished  Logotheti  to  please  to 
understand  that  he  wanted  to  settle  up  for  all  expenses 


340  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvi 

as  soon  as  possible,  and  to  pay  his  weekly  bills  at  Dr. 
Bream's.  There  had  been  twenty  or  thirty  pounds  in 
notes  in  his  pocket-book,  and  a  letter  of  credit,  but  all 
his  things  had  been  taken  away  from  him.  He  con 
cluded  it  was  all  right,  but  it  seemed  rather  strenuous 
to  take  his  papers  too.  Perhaps  Mr.  Logotheti,  who 
was  so  kind,  would  make  sure  that  they  were  in  a  safe 
place,  and  tell  the  doctor  to  let  him  see  any  other  friends 
who  called.  Then  he  asked  for  another  of  those  wonder 
ful  cigarettes,  but  Logotheti  was  awfully  sorry  —  there 
had  only  been  two,  and  he  had  just  smoked  the  other 
himself.  He  showed  his  empty  case. 

'By  the  way/  he  said,  'if  the  doctor  should  happen 
to  come  in  and  notice  the  smell  of  the  smoke,  don't  tell 
him  that  you  had  one  of  mine.  My  tobacco  is  rather 
strong,  and  he  might  think  it  would  do  you  harm,  you 
know.  I  see  that  you  have  some  light  ones  there,  on 
the  table.  Just  let  him  think  that  you  smoked  one  of 
them.  I  promise  to  bring  some  more  to-morrow,  and 
we'll  have  a  couple  together/ 

That  was  what  Logotheti  said,  and  it  comforted  Mr. 
Feist,  who  recognised  the  opium  at  once;  all  that  after 
noon  and  through  all  the  next  morning  he  told  himself 
that  he  was  to  have  another  of  those  cigarettes,  and 
perhaps  two,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when 
Logotheti  had  said  that  he  would  corne  again. 

Before  leaving  his  own  rooms  on  the  following  day, 
the  Greek  put  four  cigarettes  into  his  case,  for  he  had 
not  forgotten  his  promise;  he  took  two  from  a  box  that 
lay  on  the  table,  and  placed  them  so  that  they  would  be 


CHAP.  XVI  THE  PRIMADONNA  341 

nearest  to  his  own  hand  when  he  offered  his  case,  but 
he  took  the  other  two  from  a  drawer  which  was  always 
locked,  and  of  which  the  key  was  at  one  end  of  his 
superornate  watch-chain,  and  he  placed  them  on  the 
other  side  of  the  case,  conveniently  for  a  friend  to  take. 
All  four  cigarettes  looked  exactly  alike. 

If  any  one  had  pointed  out  to  him  that  an  English 
man  would  not  think  it  fair  play  to  drug  a  man  deliber 
ately,  Logotheti  would  have  smiled  and  would  have 
replied  by  asking  whether  it  was  fair  play  to  accuse  an 
innocent  man  of  murder,  a  retort  which  would  only  be 
come  unanswerable  if  it  could  be  proved  that  Van  Torp 
was  suspected  unjustly.  But  to  this  objection,  again, 
the  Greek  would  have  replied  that  he  had  been  brought 
up  in  Constantinople,  where  they  did  things  in  that 
way;  and  that,  except  for  the  trifling  obstacle  of  the  law, 
there  was  no  particular  reason  for  not  strangling  Mr. 
Feist  with  the  English  equivalent  for  a  bowstring,  since 
he  had  printed  a  disagreeable  story  about  Miss  Donne, 
and  was,  besides,  a  very  offensive  sort  of  person  in 
appearance  and  manner.  There  had  always  been  a  cer 
tain  directness  about  Logotheti's  view  of  man's  rights. 

He  went  to  see  Mr.  Feist  every  day  at  three  o'clock, 
in  the  most  kind  way  possible,  made  himself  as  agreeable 
as  he  could,  and  gave  him  cigarettes  with  a  good  deal 
of  opium  in  them.  He  also  presented  Feist  with  a  pretty 
little  asbestos  lamp  which  was  constructed  to  purify 
the  air,  and  had  a  really  wonderful  capacity  for  absorb 
ing  the  rather  peculiar  odour  of  the  cigarettes.  Dr. 
Bream  always  made  his  round  hi  the  morning,  and  the 


342  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvi 

men  nurses  he  employed  to  take  care  of  his  patients 
either  did  not  notice  anything  unusual,  or  supposed 
that  Logo  the  ti  smoked  some  'outlandish  Turkish  stuff,' 
and,  because  he  was  a  privileged  person,  they  said 
nothing  about  it.  As  he  had  brought  the  patient  to 
the  establishment  to  be  cured,  it  was  really  not  to  be 
supposed  that  he  would  supply  him  with  forbidden 
narcotics. 

Now,  to  a  man  who  is  poisoned  with  drink  and  is 
suddenly  deprived  of  it,  opium  is  from  the  beginning 
as  delightful  as  it  is  nauseous  to  most  healthy  people 
when  they  first  taste  it;  and  during  the  next  four  or 
five  days,  while  Feist  appeared  to  be  improving  faster 
than  might  have  been  expected,  he  was  in  reality 
acquiring  such  a  craving  for  his  daily  dose  of  smoke 
that  it  would  soon  be  acute  suffering  to  be  deprived  of 
it;  and  this  was  what  Logotheti  wished.  He  wrould  have 
supplied  him  with  brandy  if  he  had  not  been  sure  that 
the  contraband  would  be  discovered  and  stopped  by 
the  doctor;  but  opium,  in  the  hands  of  one  who  knows 
exactly  how  it  is  used,  is  very  much  harder  to  detect, 
unless  the  doctor  sees  the  smoker  when  he  is  under  the 
influence  of  the  drug,  while  the  pupils  of  the  eye  are 
unnaturally  contracted  and  the  face  is  relaxed  in  that 
expression  of  beatitude  which  only  the  great  narcotics 
can  produce  —  the  state  which  Baudelaire  called  the 
Artificial  Paradise. 

During  these  daily  visits  Logotheti  became  very 
confidential;  that  is  to  say,  he  exercised  all  his  ingenuity 
in  the  attempt  to  make  Feist  talk  about  himself.  But 


CHAP.  XVI  THE   PRIMADONNA  343 

he  was  not  very  successful.  Broken  as  the  man  was, 
his  characteristic  reticence  was  scarcely  at  all  relaxed, 
and  it  was  quite  impossible  to  get  beyond  the  barrier. 
One  day  Logotheti  gave  him  a  cigarette  more  than 
usual,  as  an  experiment,  but  he  went  to  sleep  almost 
immediately,  sitting  up  in  his  chair.  The  opium,  as  a 
moderate  substitute  for  liquor,  temporarily  restored  the 
habitual  tone  of  his  system  and  revived  his  natural 
self-control,  and  Logotheti  soon  gave  up  the  idea  of 
extracting  any  secret  from  him  in  a  moment  of  garrulous 
expansion. 

There  was  the  other  way,  which  was  now  prepared, 
and  the  Greek  had  learned  enough  about  his  victim  to 
justify  him  in  using  it.  The  cypher  expert,  who  had 
been  at  work  on  Feist's  diary,  had  now  completed  his 
key  and  brought  Logotheti  the  translation.  He  was  a 
rather  shabby  little  man,  a  penman  employed  to  do 
occasional  odd  jobs  about  the  Foreign  Office,  such  as 
engrossing  documents  and  the  like,  by  which  he  earned 
from  eighteenpence  to  half-a-crown  an  hour,  according 
to  the  style  of  penmanship  required,  and  he  was  well 
known  in  the  criminal  courts  as  an  expert  on  hand 
writing  in  forgery  cases. 

He  brought  his  work  to  Logotheti,  who  at  once  asked 
for  the  long  entry  concerning  the  night  of  the  explosion. 
The  expert  turned  to  it  and  read  it  aloud.  It  was  a 
statement  of  the  circumstances  to  which  Feist  was  pre 
pared  to  swear,  and  which  have  been  summed  up  in  a 
previous  chapter.  Van  Torp  was  not  mentioned  by 
name  in  the  diary,  but  was  referred  to  as  'he';  the 


344  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvi 

other  entries  in  the  journal,  however,  fully  proved  that 
Van  Torp  was  meant,  even  if  Logotheti  had  felt  any 
doubt  of  it. 

The  expert  informed  him,  however,  that  the  entry 
was  not  the  original  one,  which  had  apparently  been 
much  shorter,  and  had  been  obliterated  hi  the  ordinary 
way  with  a  solution  of  chloride  of  lime.  Here  and 
there  very  pale  traces  of  the  previous  writing  were  faintly 
visible,  but  there  was  not  enough  to  give  the  sense  of 
what  was  gone.  This  proved  that  the  ink  had  not  been 
long  dry  when  it  had  been  removed,  as  the  expert  ex 
plained.  It  was  very  hard  to  destroy  old  writing  so 
completely  that  neither  heat  nor  chemicals  would  bring 
it  out  again.  Therefore  Feist  must  have  decided  to 
change  the  entry  soon  after  he  had  made  it,  and  prob 
ably  on  the  next  day.  The  expert  had  not  found  any 
other  page  which  had  been  similarly  treated.  The 
shabby  little  man  looked  at  Logotheti,  and  Logotheti 
looked  at  him,  and  both  nodded;  and  the  Greek  paid 
him  generously  for  his  work. 

It  was  clear  that  Feist  had  meant  to  aid  his  own 
memory,  and  had  rather  clumsily  tampered  with  his 
diary  in  order  to  make  it  agree  with  the  evidence  he 
intended  to  give,  rather  than  meaning  to  produce  the 
notes  in  court.  What  Logotheti  meant  to  find  out  was 
what  the  man  himself  really  knew  and  what  he  had  first 
written  down;  that,  and  some  other  things.  In  con 
versation,  Logotheti  had  asked  him  to  describe  the 
panic  at  the  theatre,  and  Cordova's  singing  in  the  dark, 
but  Feist's  answers  had  been  anything  but  interesting. 


CHAP,  xvi  THE   PRIMADONNA  345 

'  You  can't  remember  much  about  that  kind  of  thing/ 
he  had  said  in  his  drawling  way,  '  because  there  isn't 
much  to  remember.  There  was  a  crash  and  the  lights 
went  out,  and  people  fought  their  way  to  the  doors  in 
the  dark  till  there  was  a  general  squash;  then  Madame 
Cordova  began  to  sing,  and  that  kind  of  calmed  things 
down  till  the  lights  went  up  again.  That's  about  all 
I  remember.' 

His  recollections  did  not  at  all  agree  with  what  he 
had  entered  in  his  diary;  but  though  Logo  the  ti  tried  a 
second  time  two  days  later,  Feist  repeated  the  same 
story  with  absolute  verbal  accuracy.  The  Greek  asked 
him  if  he  had  known  'that  poor  Miss  Bamberger  who 
died  of  shock.'  Feist  blew  out  a  cloud  of  drugged 
tobacco  smoke  before  he  answered,  with  one  of  his  dis 
agreeable  smiles,  that  he  had  known  her  pretty  well, 
for  he  had  been  her  father's  private  secretary.  He  ex 
plained  that  he  had  given  up  the  place  because  he  had 
come  into  some  money.  Mr.  Bamberger  was  'a  very 
pleasant  gentleman/  Feist  declared,  and  poor  Miss 
Bamberger  had  been  a  'superb  dresser  and  a  first-class 
conversationalist,  and  was  a  severe  loss  to  her  friends 
and  admirers.'  Though  Logo  the  ti,  who  was  only  a 
Greek,  did  not  understand  every  word  of  this  panegyric, 
he  perceived  that  it  was  intended  for  the  highest  praise. 
He  said  he  should  like  to  know  Mr.  Bamberger,  and 
was  sorry  that  he  had  not  known  Miss  Bamberger,  who 
had  been  engaged  to  marry  Mr.  Van  Torp,  as  every  one 
had  heard. 

He  thought  he  saw  a  difference  in  Feist's  expression, 


346  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvi 

but  was  not  sure  of  it.  The  pale,  unhealthy,  and  yet 
absurdly  youthful  face  was  not  naturally  mobile,  and 
the  almost  colourless  eyes  always  had  rather  a  fixed 
and  staring  look.  Logo  the  ti  was  aware  of  a  new  mean 
ing  in  them  rather  than  of  a  distinct  change.  He  ac 
cordingly  went  on  to  say  that  he  had  heard  poor  Miss 
Bamberger  spoken  of  as  heartless,  and  he  brought  out  the 
word  so  unexpectedly  that  Feist  looked  sharply  at  him. 

'Well/  he  said,  'some  people  certainly  thought  so. 
I  daresay  she  was.  It  don't  matter  much,  now  she's 
dead,  anyway.' 

'She  paid  for  it,  poor  girl/  answered  Logo  the  ti  very 
deliberately.  'They  say  she  was  murdered/ 

The  change  in  Feist's  face  was  now  unmistakable. 
There  was  a  drawing  down  of  the  corners  of  the  mouth, 
and  a  lowering  of  the  lids  that  meant  something,  and 
the  unhealthy  complexion  took  a  greyish  shade.  Logo- 
theti  was  too  wise  to  watch  his  intended  victim,  and 
leaned  back  in  a  careless  attitude,  gazing  out  of  the 
window  at  the  bright  creeper  on  the  opposite  wall. 

'I've  heard  it  suggested/  said  Mr.  Feist  rather  thickly, 
out  of  a  perfect  storm  of  drugged  smoke. 

It  came  out  of  his  ugly  nostrils,  it  blew  out  of  his 
mouth,  it  seemed  to  issue  even  from  his  ears  and  eyes. 

'I  suppose  we  shall  never  know  the  truth/  said  Logo- 
theti  in  an  idle  tone,  and  not  seeming  to  look  at  his 
companion.  'Mr.  Griggs  —  do  you  remember  Mr. 
Griggs,  the  author,  at  the  Turkish  Embassy,  where  we 
first  met?  Tall  old  fellow,  sad-looking,  bony,  hard; 
you  remember  him,  don't  you?' 


CHAP.  XVI  THE   PRIMADONNA  347 

'Why,  yes/  drawled  Feist,  emitting  more  smoke,  'I 
know  him  quite  well.' 

'He  found  blood  on  his  hands  after  he  had  carried 
her.  Had  you  not  heard  that?  I  wondered  whether 
you  saw  her  that  evening.  Did  you?' 

'I  saw  her  from  a  distance  in  the  box  with  her  friends/ 
answered  Feist  steadily. 

'Did  you  see  her  afterwards?' 

The  direct  question  came  suddenly,  and  the  strained 
look  in  Feist's  face  became  more  intense.  Logotheti 
fancied  he  understood  very  well  what  was  passing  in 
the  young  man's  mind;  he  intended  to  swear  in  court 
that  he  had  seen  Van  Torp  drag  the  girl  to  the  place 
where  her  body  was  afterwards  found,  and  if  he  now 
denied  this,  the  Greek,  who  was  probably  Van  Torp's 
friend,  might  appear  as  a  witness  and  narrate  the  present 
conversation;  and  though  this  would  not  necessarily 
invalidate  the  evidence,  it  might  weaken  it  in  the  opinion 
of  the  jury.  Feist  had  of  course  suspected  that  Logo 
theti  had  some  object  in  forcing  him  to  undergo  a  cure, 
and  this  suspicion  had  been  confirmed  by  the  opium 
cigarettes,  which  he  would  have  refused  after  the  first 
time  if  he  had  possessed  the  strength  of  mind  to  do  so. 

While  Logotheti  watched  him,  three  small  drops  of 
perspiration  appeared  high  up  on  his  forehead,  just  where 
the  parting  of  his  thin  light  hair  began;  for  he  felt  that 
he  must  make  up  his  mind  what  to  say,  and  several 
seconds  had  already  elapsed  since  the  question. 

'As  a  matter  of  fact/  he  said  at  last,  with  an  evident 
effort,  'I  did  catch  sight  of  Miss  Bamberger  later/ 


348  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvi 

He  had  been  aware  of  the  moisture  on  his  forehead, 
and  had  hoped  that  Logotheti  would  not  notice  it,  but 
the  drops  now  gathered  and  rolled  down,  so  that  he 
was  obliged  to  take  out  his  handkerchief. 

'It's  getting  quite  hot/  he  said,  by  way  of  explanation. 

'Yes/  answered  Logotheti,  humouring  him,  'the  room 
is  warm.  You  must  have  been  one  of  the  last  people 
who  saw  Miss  Bamberger  alive/  he  added.  'Was  she 
trying  to  get  out?' 

'I  suppose  so.' 

Logotheti  pretended  to  laugh  a  little. 

'You  must  have  been  quite  sure  when  you  saw  her/ 
he  said. 

Feist  was  in  a  very  overwrought  condition  by  this 
time,  and  Logotheti  reflected  that  if  his  nerve  did  not 
improve  he  would  make  a  bad  impression  on  a  jury. 

'Now  I'll  tell  you  the  truth/  he  said  rather  des 
perately. 

'By  all  means!'  And  Logotheti  prepared  to  hear 
and  remember  accurately  the  falsehood  which  would 
probably  follow  immediately  on  such  a  statement. 

But  he  was  disappointed. 

'The  truth  is/  said  Feist,  'I  don't  care  much  to  talk 
about  this  affair  at  present.  I  can't  explain  now,  but 
you'll  understand  one  of  these  days,  and  you'll  say  I 
was  right.' 

'Oh,  I  see!' 

Logotheti  smiled  and  held  out  his  case,  for  Feist  had 
finished  the  first  cigarette.  He  refused  another,  how 
ever,  to  the  other's  surprise. 


CHAP.  XVI  THE   PRIMADONNA  349 

'Thanks/  he  said,  'but  I  guess  I  won't  smoke  any 
more  of  those.  I  believe  they  get  on  to  my  nerves.' 

1  Do  you  really  not  wish  me  to  bring  you  any  more  of 
them?'  asked  Logotheti,  affecting  a  sort  of  surprised 
concern.  'Do  you  think  they  hurt  you?' 

'I  do.  That's  exactly  what  I  mean.  I'm  much 
obliged,  all  the  same,  but  I'm  going  to  give  them  up, 
just  like  that.' 

'Very  well,'  Logotheti  answered.  'I  promise  not  to 
bring  any  more.  I  think  you  are  very  wise  to  make 
the  resolution,  if  you  really  think  they  hurt  you  — 
though  I  don't  see  why  they  should.' 

Like  most  weak  people  who  make  good  resolutions, 
Mr.  Feist  did  not  realise  what  he  was  doing.  He  under 
stood  horribly  well,  forty-eight  hours  later,  when  he  was 
dragging  himself  at  his  tormentor's  feet,  entreating  the 
charity  of  half  a  cigarette,  of  one  teaspoonful  of  liquor, 
of  anything,  though  it  were  deadly  poison,  that  could 
rest  his  agonised  nerves  for  a  single  hour,  for  ten  minutes, 
for  an  instant,  offering  his  life  and  soul  for  it,  parching 
for  it,  burning,  sweating,  trembling,  vibrating  with 
horror,  and  sick  with  fear  for  the  want  of  it. 

For  Logotheti  was  an  Oriental  and  had  lived  in  Con 
stantinople;  and  he  knew  what  opium  does,  and  what 
a  man  will  do  to  get  it,  and  that  neither  passion  of  love, 
nor  bond  of  affection,  nor  fear  of  man  or  God,  nor  of 
death  and  damnation,  will  stand  against  that  awful 
craving  when  the  poison  is  within  reach. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  society  papers  printed  a  paragraph  which  said  that 
Lord  Creedmore  and  Countess  Leven  were  going  to  have 
a  week-end  party  at  Craythew,  and  the  list  of  guests 
included  the  names  of  Mr.  Van  Torp  and  Senorita  da 
Cordova,  'Monsieur  Konstantinos  Logotheti'  and  Mr. 
Paul  Griggs,  after  those  of  a  number  of  overpoweringly 
smart  people. 

Lady  Maud's  brothers  saw  the  paragraph,  and  the  one 
who  was  in  the  Grenadier  Guards  asked  the  one  who  was 
in  the  Blues  if  '  the  Governor  was  going  in  for  zoology  or 
lion-taming  in  his  old  age ' ;  but  the  brother  in  the  Blues 
said  it  was  l  Maud  who  liked  freaks  of  nature,  and  Greeks, 
and  things,  because  they  were  so  amusing  to  photograph.' 

At  all  events,  Lady  Maud  had  studiously  left  out  her 
brothers  and  sisters  in  making  up  the  Craythew  party, 
a  larger  one  than  had  been  assembled  there  for  many 
years;  it  was  so  large  indeed  that  the  l freaks'  would  not 
have  been  prominent  figures  at  all,  even  if  they  had  been 
such  unusual  persons  as  the  young  man  in  the  Blues 
imagined  them. 

For  though  Lord  Creedmore  was  not  a  rich  peer,  Cray 
thew  was  a  fine  old  place,  and  could  put  up  at  least  thirty 
guests  without  crowding  them  and  without  causing  that 
most  uncomfortable  condition  of  things  in  which  people 

350 


CHAP.  XVII  THE   PRIMADONNA  351 

run  over  each  other  from  morning  to  night  during  week 
end  parties  in  the  season,  when  there  is  no  hunting  or 
shooting  to  keep  the  men  out  all  day.  The  house  itself 
was  two  or  three  times  as  big  as  Mr.  Van  Torp's  at  Oxley 
Paddox.  It  had  its  hall,  its  long  drawing-room  for  dan 
cing,  its  library,  its  breakfast-room  and  its  morning- 
room,  its  billiard-room,  sitting-room,  and  smoking-room, 
like  many  another  big  English  country  house;  but  it 
had  also  a  picture  gallery,  the  library  was  an  historical 
collection  that  filled  three  good-sized  rooms,  and  it  was 
completed  by  one  which  had  always  been  called  the  study, 
beyond  which  there  were  two  little  dwelling-rooms,  at 
the  end  of  the  wing,  where  the  librarian  had  lived  when 
there  had  been  one.  For  the  old  lord  had  been  a  bache 
lor  and  a  book  lover,  but  the  present  master  of  the  house, 
who  was  tremendously  energetic  and  practical,  took 
care  of  the  books  himself.  Now  and  then,  when  the 
house  was  almost  full,  a  guest  was  lodged  in  the  former 
librarian's  small  apartment,  and  on  the  present  occasion 
Paul  Griggs  was  to  be  put  there,  on  the  ground  that  he 
was  a  man  of  letters  and  must  be  glad  to  be  near  books, 
and  also  because  he  could  not  be  supposed  to  be  afraid 
of  Lady  Letitia  Foxwell's  ghost,  which  was  believed  to 
have  spent  the  nights  in  the  library  for  the  last  hundred 
and  fifty  years,  more  or  less,  ever  since  the  unhappy 
young  girl  had  hanged  herself  there  in  the  time  of  George 
the  Second,  on  the  eve  of  her  wedding  day. 

The  ancient  house  stood  more  than  a  mile  from  the 
high  road,  near  the  further  end  of  such  a  park  as  is  rarely 
to  be  seen,  even  in  beautiful  Derbyshire,  for  the  Fox- 


352  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvn 

wells  had  always  loved  their  trees,  as  good  Englishmen 
should,  and  had  taken  care  of  them.  There  were  ancient 
oaks  there,  descended  by  less  than  four  tree-generations 
from  Druid  times;  all  down  the  long  drive  the  great 
elms  threw  their  boughs  skywards;  there  the  solemn 
beeches  grew,  the  gentler  ash,  and  the  lime;  there  the 
yews  spread  out  their  branches,  and  here  and  there  the 
cedar  of  Lebanon,  patriarch  of  all  trees  that  bear  cones, 
reared  his  royal  crown  above  the  rest;  in  and  out,  too, 
amongst  the  great  boulders  that  strewed  the  park,  the 
sharp-leaved  holly  stood  out  boldly,  and  the  exquisite 
white  thorn,  all  in  flower,  shot  up  to  three  and  four 
times  a  man's  height;  below,  the  heather  grew  close  and 
green  to  blossom  in  the  summer-time;  and  in  the  deeper, 
lonelier  places  the  blackthorn  and  hoe  ran  wild,  and  the 
dog-rose  in  wild  confusion;  the  alder  and  the  gorse  too, 
the  honeysuckle  and  ivy,  climbed  up  over  rocks  and 
stems;  you  might  see  a  laurel  now  and  then,  and  bilberry 
bushes  by  thousands,  and  bracken  everywhere  in  an 
endless  profusion  of  rich,  dark-green  lace. 

Squirrels  there  were,  dashing  across  the  open  glades 
and  running  up  the  smooth  beeches  and  chestnut  trees, 
as  quick  as  light,  and  rabbits,  dodging  in  and  out  amongst 
the  ferns,  and  just  showing  the  snow-white  patch  under 
their  little  tails  as  they  disappeared,  and  now  and  again 
the  lordly  deer  stepping  daintily  and  leisurely  through 
the  deep  fern;  all  these  lived  in  the  wonderful  depths  of 
Craythew  Park,  and  of  birds  there  was  no  end.  There 
were  game  birds  and  song  birds,  from  the  handsome 
pheasants  to  the  modest  little  partridges,  the  royalists 


CHAP,  xvil  THE  PRIMADONNA  353 

and  the  puritans  of  the  woods,  from  the  love-lorn  wood- 
pigeon,  cooing  in  the  tall  firs,  to  the  thrush  and  the 
blackbird,  making  long  hops  as  they  quartered  the 
ground  for  grubs;  and  the  robin,  the  linnet,  and  little 
Jenny  Wren  all  lived  there  in  riotous  plenty  of  worms 
and  snails;  and  nearer  to  the  great  house  the  starlings 
and  jackdaws  shot  down  in  a  great  hurry  from  the  holes 
in  old  trees  where  they  had  their  nests,  and  many  of 
them  came  rushing  from  their  headquarters  in  the 
ruined  tower  by  the  stream  to  waddle  about  the  open 
lawns  in  their  ungainly  fashion,  vain  because  they  were 
not  like  swallows,  but  could  really  walk  when  they  chose, 
though  they  did  it  rather  badly.  And  where  the  woods 
ended  they  were  lined  with  rhododendrons,  and  lilacs, 
and  laburnum.  There  are  even  bigger  parks  in  England 
than  Craythew,  but  there  is  none  more  beautiful,  none 
richer  in  all  sweet  and  good  things  that  live,  none  more 
musical  with  song  of  birds,  not  one  that  more  deeply 
breathes  the  world's  oldest  poetry. 

Lady  Maud  went  out  on  foot  that  afternoon  and  met 
Van  Torp  in  the  drive,  half  a  mile  from  the  house.  He 
came  in  his  motor  car  with  Miss  More  and  Ida,  who  was 
to  go  back  after  tea.  It  was  by  no  means  the  first  time 
that  they  had  been  at  Craythew;  the  little  girl  loved 
nature,  and  understood  by  intuition  much  that  would 
have  escaped  a  normal  child.  It  was  her  greatest  de 
light  to  come  over  in  the  motor  and  spend  two  or  three 
hours  in  the  park,  and  when  none  of  the  family  were  in 
the  country  she  was  always  free  to  come  and  go,  with 
Miss  More,  as  she  pleased. 


354  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvil 

Lady  Maud  kissed  her  kindly  and  shook  hands  with 
her  teacher  before  the  car  went  on  to  leave  Mr.  Van 
Torp's  things  at  the  house.  Then  the  two  walked  slowly 
along  the  road,  and  neither  spoke  for  some  time,  nor 
looked  at  the  other,  but  both  kept  their  eyes  on  the 
ground  before  them,  as  if  expecting  something. 

Mr.  Van  Torp's  hands  were  in  his  .pockets,  his  soft 
straw  hat  was  pushed  rather  far  back  on  his  sandy  head, 
and  as  he  walked  he  breathed  an  American  tune  between 
his  teeth,  raising  one  side  of  his  upper  lip  to  let  the  faint 
sound  pass  freely  without  turning  itself  into  a  real 
whistle.  It  is  rather  a  Yankee  trick,  and  is  particularly 
offensive  to  some  people,  but  Lady  Maud  did  not  mind  it 
at  all,  though  she  heard  it  distinctly.  It  always  meant 
that  Mr.  Van  Torp  was  in  deep  thought,  and  she  guessed 
that,  just  then,  he  was  thinking  more  about  her  than  of 
himself.  In  his  pocket  he  held  in  his  right  hand  a  small 
envelope  which  he  meant  to  bring  out  presently  and  give 
to  her,  where  nobody  would  be  likely  to  see  them. 

Presently,  when  the  motor  had  turned  to  the  left,  far 
up  the  long  drive,  he  raised  his  eyes  and  looked  about 
him.  He  had  the  sight  of  a  man  who  has  lived  in  the 
wilderness,  and  not  only  sees,  but  knows  how  to  see, 
which  is  a  very  different  thing.  Having  satisfied  him 
self,  he  withdrew  the  envelope  and  held  it  out  to  his 
companion. 

'I  thought  you  might  just  as  well  have  some  more 
money/  he  said,  'so  I  brought  you  some.  I  may  want 
to  sail  any  minute.  I  don't  know.  Yes,  you'd  better 
take  it.' 


CHAP.  XYH  THE   PRIMADONNA  355 

Lady  Maud  had  looked  up  quickly  and  had  hesitated 
to  receive  the  envelope,  but  when  he  finished  speaking 
she  took  it  quickly  and  slipped  it  into  the  opening  of 
her  long  glove,  pushing  it  down  till  it  lay  in  the  palm 
of  her  hand.  She  fastened  the  buttons  before  she  spoke. 

1  How  thoughtful  you  always  are  for  me ! ' 

She  unconsciously  used  the  very  words  with  which 
she  had  thanked  him  in  Hare  Court  the  last  time  he  had 
given  her  money.  The  tone  told  him  how  deeply  grate 
ful  she  was. 

'Well/  he  said  in  answer,  'as  far  as  that  goes,  it's  for 
you  yourself,  as  much  as  if  I  didn't  know  where  it  went; 
and  if  I'm  obliged  to  sail  suddenly  I  don't  want  you  to 
be  out  of  your  reckoning.' 

'You're  much  too  good,  Rufus.  Do  you  really  mean 
that  you  may  have  to  go  back  at  once,  to  defend  your 
self?' 

'No,  not  exactly  that.  But  business  is  business,  and 
somebody  responsible  has  got  to  be  there,  since  poor  old 
Bamberger  has  gone  crazy  and  come  abroad  to  stay  — 
apparently.' 

'Crazy?' 

'Well,  he  behaves  like  it,  anyway.  I'm  beginning  to 
be  sorry  for  that  man.  I'm  in  earnest.  You  mayn't 
believe  it,  but  I  really  am.  Kind  of  unnatural,  isn't  it, 
for  me  to  be  sorry  for  people?' 

He  looked  steadily  at  Lady  Maud  for  a  moment,  then 
smiled  faintly,  looked  away,  and  began  to  blow  his  little 
tune  through  his  teeth  again. 

'You  were  sorry  for  little  Ida,'  suggested  Lady  Maud. 


356  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XVH 

'That's  different.  I  —  I  liked  her  mother  a  good 
deal,  and  when  the  child  was  turned  adrift  I  sort  of 
looked  after  her.  Anybody 'd  do  that,  I  expect.7 

'And  you're  sorry  for  me,  in  a  way,'  said  Lady  Maud. 

'You're  different,  too.  You're  my  friend.  I  suppose 
you're  about  the  only  one  I've  got,  too.  We  can't  com 
plain  of  being  crowded  out  of  doors  by  our  friends, 
either  of  us,  can  we?  Besides,  I  shouldn't  put  it  in  that 
way,  or  call  it  being  sorry,  exactly.  It's  another  kind 
of  feeling  I  have.  I'd  like  to  undo  your  life  and  make 
it  over  again  for  you,  the  right  way,  so  that  you'd  be 
happy.  I  can  do  a  great  deal,  but  all  the  cursed  nickel 
in  the  world  won't  bring  back  the  —  -'he  checked  him 
self  suddenly,  shutting  his  hard  lips  with  an  audible 
clack,  and  looking  down.  'I  beg  your  pardon,  my 
dear,'  he  said  in  a  low  voice,  a  moment  later. 

For  he  had  been  very  near  to  speaking  of  the  dead, 
and  he  felt  instinctively  that  the  rough  speech,  however 
kindly  meant,  would  have  pained  her,  and  perhaps  had 
already  hurt  her  a  little.  But  as  she  looked  down,  too, 
her  hand  gently  touched  the  sleeve  of  his  coat  to  tell 
him  that  there  was  nothing  to  forgive. 

'He  knows,'  she  said,  more  softly  than  sadly.  'Where 
he  is,  they  know  about  us  —  when  we  try  to  do  right.' 

'And  you  haven't  only  tried,'  Van  Torp  answered 
quietly,  'you've  done  it.' 

'Have  I?'  It  sounded  as  if  she  asked  the  question 
of  herself,  or  of  some  one  to  whom  she  appealed  in  her 
heart.  'I  often  wonder,'  she  added  thoughtfully. 

'You    needn't    worry,'    said    her    companion,    more 


CHAP,  xvii  THE  PRIMADONNA  357 

cheerily  than  he  had  yet  spoken.  'Do  you  want  to 
know  why  I  think  you  needn't  fuss  about  your  con 
science  and  your  soul,  and  things?' 

He  smiled  now,  and  so  did  she,  but  more  at  the  words 
he  used  than  at  the  question  itself. 

'Yes/  she  said.     'I  should  like  to  know  why.7 

'It's  a  pretty  good  sign  for  a  lady's  soul  when  a  lot  of 
poor  creatures  bless  her  every  minute  of  their  lives  for 
fishing  them  out  of  the  mud  and  landing  them  in  a 
decent  life.  Come,  isn't  it  now?  You  know  it  is. 
That's  all.  No  further  argument's  necessary.  The 
jury  is  satisfied  and  the  verdict  is  that  you  needn't  fuss. 
So  that's  that,  and  let's  talk  about  something  else.' 

'I'm  not  so  sure/  Lady  Maud  answered.  'Is  it  right 
to  bribe  people  to  do  right?  Sometimes  it  has  seemed 
very  like  that!' 

'I  don't  set  up  to  be  an  expert  in  morality/  retorted 
Van  Torp,  'but  if  money,  properly  used,  can  prevent 
murder,  I  guess  that's  better  than  letting  the  murder 
be  committed.  You  must  allow  that.  The  same  way 
with  other  crimes,  isn't  it?  And  so  on,  down  to  mere 
misdemeanours,  till  you  come  to  ordinary  morality. 
Now  what  have  you  got  to  say?  If  it  isn't  much  better 
for  the  people  themselves  to  lead  decent  lives  just  for 
money's  sake,  it's  certainly  much  better  for  everybody 
else  that  they  should.  That  appears  to  me  to  be  un 
answerable.  You  didn't  start  in  with  the  idea  of  mak 
ing  those  poor  things  just  like  you,  I  suppose.  You 
can't  train  a  cart-horse  to  win  the  Derby.  Yet  all  their 
nonsense  about  equality  rests  on  the  theory  that  you 


358  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvn 

can.  You  can't  make  a  good  judge  out  of  a  criminal,  no 
matter  how  the  criminal  repents  of  his  crimes.  He's 
not  been  born  the  intellectual  equal  of  the  man  who's 
born  to  judge  him.  His  mind  is  biassed.  Perhaps  he's 
a  degenerate  —  everything  one  isn't  oneself  is  called 
degenerate  nowadays.  It  helps  things,  I  suppose.  And 
you  can't  expect  to  collect  a  lot  of  poor  wretches  to 
gether  and  manufacture  first-class  Magdalens  out  of 
ninety-nine  per  cent  of  them,  because  you're  the  one 
that  needs  no  repentance,  can  you?  I  forget  whether 
the  Bible  says  it  was  ninety-nine  who  did  or  ninety-nine 
who  didn't,  but  you'll  understand  my  drift,  I  dare 
say.  It's  logic,  if  it  isn't  Scripture.  All  right.  As  long 
as  you  can  stop  the  evil,  without  doing  wrong  yourself, 
you're  bringing  about  a  good  result.  So  don't  fuss. 
See?' 

'Yes,  I  see!'  Lady  Maud  smiled.  'But  it's  your 
money  that  does  it!' 

'That's  nothing,'  Van  Torp  said,  as  if  he  disliked  the 
subject. 

He  changed  it  effectually  by  speaking  of  his  own 
present  intentions  and  explaining  to  his  friend  what  he 
meant  to  do. 

His  point  of  view  seemed  to  be  that  Bamberger  was 
quite  mad  since  his  daughter's  death,  and  had  built  up 
a  sensational  but  clumsy  case,  with  the  help  of  the  man 
Feist,  whose  evidence,  as  a  confirmed  dipsomaniac,  would 
be  all  but  worthless.  It  was  possible,  Van  Torp  said, 
that  Miss  Bamberger  had  been  killed;  in  fact,  Griggs' 
evidence  alone  would  almost  prove  it.  But  the  chances 


CHAP.  XVII  THE  PRIMADONNA  359 

were  a  thousand  to  one  that  she  had  been  killed  by  a 
maniac.  Such  murders  were  not  so  uncommon  as  Lady 
Maud  might  think.  The  police  in  all  countries  know 
how  many  cases  occur  which  can  be  explained  only  on 
that  theory,  and  how  diabolically  ingenious  madmen  are 
in  covering  their  tracks. 

Lady  Maud  believed  all  he  told  her,  and  had  perfect 
faith  in  his  innocence,  but  she  knew  instinctively  that 
he  was  not  telling  her  all;  and  the  certainty  that  he  was 
keeping  back  something  made  her  nervous. 

In  due  time  the  other  guests  came;  each  in  turn  met 
Mr.  Van  Torp  soon  after  arriving,  if  not  at  the  moment 
when  they  entered  the  house;  and  they  shook  hands 
with  him,  and  almost  all  knew  why  he  was  there,  but 
those  who  did  not  were  soon  told  by  the  others. 

The  fact  of  having  been  asked  to  a  country  house  for 
the  express  purpose  of  being  shown  by  ocular  demon 
stration  that  something  is  'all  right'  which  has  been 
very  generally  said  or  thought  to  be  all  wrong,  does  not 
generally  contribute  to  the  light-heartedness  of  such 
parties.  Moreover,  the  very  young  element  was  hardly 
represented,  and  there  was  a  dearth  of  those  sprightly 
boys  and  girls  who  think  it  the  acme  of  delicate  wit  to 
shut  up  an  aunt  in  the  ice-box  and  throw  the  billiard- 
table  out  of  the  window.  Neither  Lady  Maud  nor  her 
father  liked  what  Mr.  Van  Torp  called  a  'circus';  and 
besides,  the  modern  youths  and  maids  who  delight  in 
practical  jokes  were  not  the  people  whose  good  opinion 
about  the  millionaire  it  was  desired  to  obtain,  or  to 
strengthen,  as  the  case  might  be.  The  guests,  far  from 


360  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvn 

being  what  Lady  Maud's  brothers  called  a  menagerie, 
were  for  the  most  part  of  the  graver  sort  whose  approval 
weighs  in  proportion  as  they  are  themselves  social  heavy 
weights.  There  was  the  Leader  of  the  House,  there  were 
a  couple  of  members  of  the  Cabinet,  there  was  the  Master 
of  the  Foxhounds,  there  was  the  bishop  of  the  diocese, 
and  there  was  one  of  the  big  Derbyshire  landowners; 
there  was  an  ex-governor-general  of  something,  an  ex- 
ambassador  to  the  United  States,  and  a  famous  general; 
there  was  a  Hebrew  financier  of  London,  and  Logotheti, 
the  Greek  financier  from  Paris,  who  were  regarded  as 
colleagues  of  Van  Torp,  the  American  financier;  there 
was  the  scientific  peer  who  had  dined  at  the  Turkish 
Embassy  with  Lady  Maud,  there  was  the  peer  whose 
horse  had  just  won  the  Derby,  and  there  was  the  peer 
who  knew  German  and  was  looked  upon  as  the  coming 
man  in  the  Upper  House.  Many  had  their  wives  with 
them,  and  some  had  lost  their  wives  or  could  not  bring 
them;  but  very  few  were  looking  for  a  wife,  and  there 
were  no  young  women  looking  for  husbands,  since  the 
Senorita  da  Cordova  was  apparently  not  to  be  reckoned 
with  those. 

Now  at  this  stage  of  my  story  it  would  be  unpardon 
able  to  keep  my  readers  in  suspense,  if  I  may  suppose 
that  any  of  them  have  a  little  .curiosity  left.  Therefore 
I  shall  not  narrate  in  detail  what  happened  on  Friday, 
Saturday,  and  Sunday,  seeing  that  it  was  just  what 
might  have  been  expected  to  happen  at  a  week-end 
party  during  the  season  when  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  to  do  but  to  play  golf,  tennis,  or  croquet,  or  to 


CHAP,  xvil  THE   PRIMADONNA  361 

ride  or  drive  all  day,  and  to  work  hard  at  bridge  all  the 
evening;  for  that  is  what  it  has  come  to. 

Everything  went  very  well  till  Sunday  night,  and 
most  of  the  people  formed  a  much  better  opinion  of 
Mr.  Van  Torp  than  those  who  had  lately  read  about 
him  in  the  newspapers  might  have  thought  possible. 
The  Cabinet  Ministers  talked  politics  with  him  and 
found  him  sound — for  an  American;  the  M.F.H.  saw  him 
ride,  and  felt  for  him  exactly  the  sympathy  which  a  Don 
Cossack,  a  cowboy,  and  a  Bedouin  might  feel  for  each 
other  if  they  met  on  horseback,  and  which  needs  no 
expression  in  words;  and  the  three  distinguished  peers 
liked  him  at  once,  because  he  was  not  at  all  impressed 
by  their  social  greatness,  but  was  very  much  interested 
in  what  they  had  to  say  respectively  about  science, 
horse-breeding,  and  Herr  Bebel.  The  great  London 
financier,  and  he,  and  Monsieur  Logotheti  exchanged 
casual  remarks  which  all  the  men  who  were  interested 
in  politics  referred  to  mysterious  loans  that  must  affect 
the  armaments  of  the  combined  powers  and  the  peace 
of  Europe. 

Mr.  Van  Torp  kept  away  from  the  Primadonna,  and 
she  watched  him  curiously,  a  good  deal  surprised  to  see 
that  most  of  the  others  liked  him  better  than  she  had 
expected.  She  was  rather  agreeably  disappointed,  too, 
at  the  reception  she  herself  met  with.  Lord  Creedmore 
spoke  of  her  only  as  'Miss  Donne,  the  daughter  of  his 
oldest  friend/  and  every  one  treated  her  accordingly. 
No  one  even  mentioned  her  profession,  and  possibly 
some  of  the  guests  did  not  quite  realise  that  she  was  the 


362  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvn 

famous  Cordova.  Lady  Maud  never  suggested  that  she 
should  sing,  and  Lord  Creedmore  detested  music.  The 
old  piano  in  the  long  drawing-room  was  hardly  ever 
opened.  It  had  been  placed  there  in  Victorian  days 
when  'a  little  music'  was  the  rule,  and  since  the  happy 
abolition  of  that  form  of  terror  it  had  been  left  where 
it  stood,  and  was  tuned  once  a  year,  in  case  anybody 
should  want  a  dance  when  there  were  young  people  in 
the  house. 

A  girl  might  as  well  master  the  Assyrian  language  in 
order  to  compose  hymns  to  Tiglath-Pileser  as  learn 
to  play  the  piano  nowadays,  but  bridge  is  played  at 
children's  parties;  let  us  not  speak  ill  of  the  Bridge  that 
has  carried  us  over. 

Margaret  was  not  out  of  her  element;  on  the  contrary, 
she  at  first  had  the  sensation  of  finding  herself  amongst 
rather  grave  and  not  uncongenial  English  people,  not 
so  very  different  from  those  with  whom  she  had  spent 
her  early  girlhood  at  Oxford.  It  was  not  strange  to 
her,  but  it  was  no  longer  familiar,  and  she  missed  the 
surroundings  to  which  she  had  grown  accustomed. 
Hitherto,  when  she  had  been  asked  to  join  such  parties, 
there  had  been  at  least  a  few  of  those  persons  who  are 
supposed  to  delight  especially  in  the  society  of  sopranos, 
actresses,  and  lionesses  generally;  but  none  of  them  were 
at  Craythew.  She  was  suddenly  transported  back  into 
regions  where  nobody  seemed  to  care  a  straw  whether 
she  could  sing  or  not,  where  nobody  flattered  her,  and 
no  one  suggested  that  it  would  be  amusing  and  instruc 
tive  to  make  a  trip  to  Spain  together,  or  that  a  charm- 


CHAP,  xvil  THE   PRIMADONNA  363 

ing  little  kiosk  at  Therapia  was  at  her  disposal  whenever 
she  chose  to  visit  the  Bosphorus. 

There  was  only  Logotheti  to  remind  her  of  her  every 
day  life,  for  Griggs  did  not  do  so  at  all;  he  belonged 
much  more  to  the  '  atmosphere/  and  though  she  knew 
that  he  had  loved  in  his  youth  a  woman  who  had  a 
beautiful  voice,  he  understood  nothing  of  music  and 
never  talked  about  it.  As  for  Lady  Maud,  Margaret 
saw  much  less  of  her  than  she  had  expected;  the  hostess 
was  manifestly  preoccupied,  and  was,  moreover,  obliged 
to  give  more  of  her  time  to  her  guests  than  would  have 
been  necessary  if  they  had  been  of  the  younger  genera 
tion  or  if  the  season  had  been  winter. 

Margaret  noticed  in  herself  a  new  phase  of  change 
with  regard  to  Logotheti,  and  she  did  not  like  it  at  all : 
he  had  become  necessary  to  her,  and  yet  she  was  secretly 
a  little  ashamed  of  him.  In  that  temple  of  respect 
ability  where  she  found  herself,  in  such  'a  cloister  of 
social  pillars'  as  Logotheti  called  the  party,  he  was  a 
discordant  figure.  She  was  haunted  by  a  painful  doubt 
that  if  he  had  not  been  a  very  important  financier  some 
of  those  quiet  middle-aged  Englishmen  might  have 
thought  him  a  '  bounder/  because  of  his  ruby  pin,  his 
summer-lightning  waistcoats,  and  his  almond-shaped 
eyes.  It  was  very  unpleasant  to  be  so  strongly  drawn  to 
a  man  whom  such  people  probably  thought  a  trifle  '  off/ 

It  irritated  her  to  be  obliged  to  admit  that  the  London 
financier,  who  was  a  professed  and  professing  Hebrew, 
was  in  appearance  an  English  gentleman,  whereas  Kon- 
stantinos  Logotheti,  with  a  pedigree  of  Christian  and 


364  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvn 

not  unpersecuted  Panariote  ancestors,  that  went  back 
to  Byzantine  times  without  the  least  suspicion  of  any 
Semitic  marriage,  might  have  been  taken  for  a  Jew  in 
Lombard  Street,  and  certainly  would  have  been  thought 
one  in  Berlin.  A  man  whose  eyes  suggested  dark 
almonds  need  not  cover  himself  with  jewellery  and 
adorn  himself  in  flaming  colours,  Margaret  thought; 
and  she  resented  his  way  of  dressing,  much  more  than 
ever  before.  Lady  Maud  had  called  him  exotic,  and 
Margaret  could  not  forget  that.  By  'exotic7  she  was 
sure  that  her  friend  meant  something  like  vulgar,  though 
Lady  Maud  said  she  liked  him. 

But  the  events  that  happened  at  Craythew  on  Sunday 
evening  threw  such  insignificant  details  as  these  into 
the  shade,  and  brought  out  the  true  character  of  the 
chief  actors,  amongst  whom  Margaret  very  unexpectedly 
found  herself. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  after  a  really  cloud 
less  June  day,  and  she  had  been  for  a  long  ramble  in  the 
park  with  Lord  Creedmore,  who  had  talked  to  her  about 
her  father  and  the  old  Oxford  days,  till  all  her  present 
life  seemed  to  be  a  mere  dream;  and  she  could  not  rea 
lise,  as  she  went  up  to  her  room,  that  she  was  to  go  back 
to  London  on  the  morrow,  to  the  theatre,  to  rehearsals, 
to  Pompeo  Stromboli,  Schreiermeyer,  and  the  public. 

She  met  Logotheti  in  the  gallery  that  ran  round  two 
sides  of  the  hall,  and  they  both  stopped  and  leaned  over 
the  balustrade  to  talk  a  little. 

'It  has  been  very  pleasant/  she  said  thoughtfully. 
'I'm  sorry  it's  over  so  soon.' 


CHAP.  XVII  THE   PRIMADONNA  365 

'Whenever  you  are  inclined  to  lead  this  sort  of  life/ 
Logotheti  answered  with  a  laugh,  'you  need  only  drop 
me  a  line.     You  shall  have  a  beautiful  old  house  and  a 
big  park  and  a  perfect  colonnade  of  respectabilities  — 
and  I'll  promise  not  to  be  a  bore.' 

Margaret  looked  at  him  earnestly  for  some  seconds, 
and  .then  asked  a  very  unexpected  and  frivolous  ques 
tion,  because  she  simply  could  not  help  it. 

'Where  did  you  get  that  tie?' 

The  question  was  strongly  emphasised,  for  it  meant 
much  more  to  her  just  then  than  he  could  possibly  have 
guessed;  perhaps  it  meant  something  which  was  affecting 
her  whole  life.  He  laughed  carelessly. 

'It's  better  to  dress  like  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  than 
to  be  taken  for  a  Levantine  gambler,'  he  answered.  'In 
the  days  when  I  was  simple-minded,  a  foreigner  in  a  fur 
coat  and  an  eyeglass  once  stopped  me  in  the  Boulevard 
des  Italiens  and  asked  if  I  could  give  him  the  address  of 
any  house  where  a  roulette-table  was  kept!  After  that 
I  took  to  jewels  and  dress!' 

Margaret  wondered  why  she  could  not  help  liking  him; 
and  by  sheer  force  of  habit  she  thought  that  he  would 
make  a  very  good-looking  stage  Romeo. 

While  she  was  thinking  of  that  and  smiling  in  spite 
of  his  tie,  the  old  clock  in  the  hall  below  chimed  the  hour, 
and  it  was  a  quarter  to  seven;  and  at  the  same  moment 
three  men  were  getting  out  of  a  train  that  had  stopped 
at  the  Craythew  station,  three  miles  from  Lord  Creed- 
more's  gate. 


CHAPTER  XVin 

THE  daylight  dinner  was  over,  and  the  large  party  was 
more  or  less  scattered  about  the  drawing-room  and  the 
adjoining  picture-gallery  in  groups  of  three  and  four, 
mostly  standing  while  they  drank  their  coffee,  and  con 
tinued  or  finished  the  talk  begun  at  table. 

By  force  of  habit  Margaret  had  stopped  beside  the 
closed  piano,  and  had  seated  herself  on  the  old-fashioned 
stool  to  have  her  coffee.  Lady  Maud  stood  beside  her, 
leaning  against  the  corner  of  the  instrument,  her  cup 
in  her  hand,  and  the  two  young  women  exchanged 
rather  idle  observations  about  the  lovely  day  that  was 
over,  and  the  perfect  weather.  Both  were  preoccupied 
and  they  did  not  look  at  each  other;  Margaret's  eyes 
watched  Logotheti,  who  was  half-way  down  the  long 
room,  before  a  portrait  by  Sir  Peter  Lely,  of  which  he 
was  apparently  pointing  out  the  beauties  to  the  elderly 
wife  of  the  scientific  peer.  Lady  Maud  was  looking  out 
at  the  light  in  the  sunset  sky  above  the  trees  beyond 
the  flower-beds  and  the  great  lawn,  for  the  piano  stood 
near  an  open  window.  From  time  to  time  she  turned 
her  head  quickly  and  glanced  towards  Van  Torp,  who 
was  talking  with  her  father  at  some  distance;  then  she 
looked  out  of  the  window  again. 

It  was  a  warm  evening;  in  the  dusk  of  the  big  rooms 

366 


CHAP,  xvill  THE   PRIMADONNA  367 

the  hum  of  voices  was  low  and  pleasant,  broken  only 
now  and  then  by  Van  Torp's  more  strident  tone.  Out 
side  it  was  still  light,  and  the  starlings  and  blackbirds 
and  thrushes  were  finishing  their  supper,  picking  up 
the  unwary  worms  and  the  tardy  little  snails,  and  mak 
ing  a  good  deal  of  sweet  noise  about  it. 

Margaret  set  down  her  cup  on  the  lid  of  the  piano, 
and  at  the  slight  sound  Lady  Maud  turned  towards  her, 
so  that  their  eyes  met.  Each  noticed  the  other's  ex 
pression. 

'What  is  it?'  asked  Lady  Maud,  with  a  little  smile 
of  friendly  concern.  'Is  anything  wrong?' 

1  No  —  that  is  —  '  Margaret  smiled  too,  as  she  hesi 
tated  -  'I  was  going  to  ask  you  the  same  question,' 
she  added  quickly. 

'It's  nothing  more  than  usual,'  returned  her  friend. 
'I  think  it  has  gone  very  well,  don't  you,  these  three 
days?  He  has  made  a  good  impression  on  everybody 
—  don't  you  think  so?' 

'Oh  yes!'  Margaret  answered  readily.  'Excellent! 
Could  not  be  better!  I  confess  to  being  surprised,  just 
a  little  —  I  mean,'  she  corrected  herself  hastily,  'after 
all  the  talk  there  has  been,  it  might  not  have  turned  out 
so  easy.' 

'Don't  you  feel  a  little  less  prejudiced  against  him 
yourself?'  asked  Lady  Maud. 

'Prejudiced!'  Margaret  repeated  the  word  thought 
fully.  'Yes,  I  suppose  I'm  prejudiced  against  him. 
That's  the  only  word.  Perhaps  it's  hateful  of  me,  but 
I  cannot  help  it  —  and  I  wish  you  wouldn't  make  me 


368  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

own  it  to  you,  for  it's  humiliating!  I'd  like  him,  if  I 
could,  for  your  sake.  But  you  must  take  the  wish  for 
the  deed/ 

' That's  better  than  nothing!'  Lady  Maud  seemed  to 
be  trying  to  laugh  a  little,  but  it  was  with  an  effort  and 
there  was  no  ripple  in  her  voice.  'You  have  something 
on  your  mind,  too,'  she  went  on,  to  change  the  subject. 
'Is  anything  troubling  you?' 

'Only  the  same  old  question.  It's  not  worth  men 
tioning!' 

'To  marry,  or  not  to  marry?' 

'Yes.  I  suppose  I  shall  take  the  leap  some  day,  and 
probably  in  the  dark,  and  then  I  shall  be  sorry  for  it. 
Most  of  you  have ! ' 

She  looked  up  at  Lady  Maud  with  a  rather  uncertain, 
flickering  smile,  as  if  she  wished  her  mind  to  be  made 
up  for  her,  and  her  hands  lay  weakly  in  her  lap,  the 
palms  almost  upwards. 

'Oh,  don't  ask  me!'  cried  her  friend,  answering  the 
look  rather  than  the  words,  and  speaking  with  some 
thing  approaching  to  vehemence. 

'Do  you  wish  you  had  waited  for  the  other  one  till 
now?'  asked  Margaret  softly,  but  she  did  not  know  that 
he  had  been  killed  in  South  Africa;  she  had  never  seen 
the  shabby  little  photograph. 

'Yes  —  for  ever!' 

That  was  all  Lady  Maud  said,  and  the  two  words 
were  not  uttered  dramatically  either,  though  gravely 
and  without  the  least  doubt. 

The  butler  and  two  men  appeared,  to  collect  the  coffee 


CHAP,  xviil  THE  PRIMADONN-A  369 

cups;  the  former  had  a  small  salver  in  his  hand  and  came 
directly  to  Lady  Maud.  He  brought  a  telegram  for  her. 

'You  don't  mind,  do  you?7  she  asked  Margaret  me 
chanically,  as  she  opened  it. 

'Of  course/  answered  the  other  hi  the  same  tone, 
and  she  looked  through  the  open  window  while  her 
friend  read  the  message. 

It  was  from  the  Embassy  in  London,  and  it  informed 
her  in  the  briefest  terms  that  Count  Leven  had  been 
killed  in  St.  Petersburg  on  the  previous  day,  in  the 
street,  by  a  bomb  intended  for  a  high  official.  Lady 
Maud  made  no  sound,  but  folded  the  telegram  into  a 
small  square  and  turned  her  back  to  the  room  for  a 
moment  in  order  to  slip  it  unnoticed  into  the  body  of 
her  black  velvet  gown.  As  she  recovered  her  former 
attitude  she  was  surprised  to  see  that  the  butler  was 
still  standing  two  steps  from  her  where  he  had  stopped 
after  he  had  taken  the  cups  from  the  piano  and  set 
them  on  the  small  salver  on  which  he  had  brought  the 
message.  He  evidently  wanted  to  say  something  to 
her  alone. 

Lady  Maud  moved  away  from  the  piano,  and  he 
followed  her  a  little  beyond  the  window,  till  she  stopped 
and  turned  to  hear  what  he  had  to  say. 

'There  are  three  persons  asking  for  Mr.  Van  Torp, 
my  lady,'  he  said  in  a  very  low  tone,  and  she  noticed 
the  disturbed  look  in  his  face.  'They've  got  a  motor 
car  waiting  in  the  avenue.' 

'What  sort  of  people  are  they?'  she  asked  quietly; 
but  she  felt  that  she  was  pale. 

2B 


370  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

'To  tell  the  truth,  my  lady/  the  butler  spoke  in  a 
whisper,  bending  his  head,  'I  think  they  are  from  Scot 
land  Yard.' 

Lady  Maud  knew  it  already;  she  had  almost  guessed  it 
when  she  had  glanced  at  his  face  before  he  spoke  at  all. 

'Show  them  into  the  old  study/  she  said,  'and  ask 
them  to  wait  a  moment.' 

The  butler  went  away  with  his  two  coffee  cups,  and 
scarcely  any  one  had  noticed  that  Lady  Maud  had  ex 
changed  a  few  words  with  him  by  the  window.  She 
turned  back  to  the  piano,  where  Margaret  was  still 
sitting  on  the  stool  with  her  hands  in  her  lap,  looking  at 
Logotheti  in  the  distance  and  wondering  whether  she 
meant  to  marry  him  or  not. 

'No  bad  news,  I  hope?'  asked  the  singer,  looking  up 
as  her  friend  came  to  her  side. 

'Not  very  good/  Lady  Maud  answered,  leaning  her 
elbow  on  the  piano.  'Should  you  mind  singing  some 
thing  to  keep  the  party  together  while  I  talk  to  some 
tiresome  men  who  are  in  the  old  study?  On  these  June 
evenings  people  have  a  way  of  wandering  out  into  the 
garden  after  dinner.  I  should  like  to  keep  every  one 
in  the  house  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  if  you  will 
only  sing  for  them  they  won't  stir.  Will  you?' 

Margaret  looked  at  her  curiously. 

'I  think  I  understand/  Margaret  said.  'The  people 
in  the  study  are  asking  for  Mr.  Van  Torp.' 

Lady  Maud  nodded,  not  surprised  that  Logotheti 
should  have  told  the  Primadonna  something  about 
what  he  had  been  doing. 


CHAP.  XVIII  THE  PRIMADONNA  371 

'Then  you  believe  he  is  innocent/  she  said  confidently. 
'Even  though  you  don't  like  him,  you'll  help  me;  won't 
you?' 

'I'll  do  anything  you  ask  me.  But  I  should 
think  - 

'No/  Lady  Maud  interrupted.  'He  must  not  be 
arrested  at  all.  I  know  that  he  would  rather  face  the 
detectives  than  run  away,  even  for  a  few  hours,  till  the 
truth  is  known.  But  I  won't  let  him.  It  would  be 
published  all  over  the  world  to-morrow  morning  that 
he  had  been  arrested  for  murder  in  my  father's  house, 
and  it  would  never  be  forgotten  against  him,  though 
he  might  be  proved  innocent  ten  times  over.  That's 
what  I  want  to  prevent.  Will  you  help  me?' 

As  she  spoke  the  last  words  she  raised  the  front  lid 
of  the  piano,  and  Margaret  turned  on  her  seat  towards 
the  instrument  to  open  the  keyboard,  nodding  her 
assent. 

'Just  play  a  little,  till  I  am  out  of  the  room,  and  then 
sing/  said  Lady  Maud. 

The  great  artist's  fingers  felt  the  keys  as  her  friend 
turned  away.  Anything  theatrical  was  natural  to  her 
now,  and  she  began  to  play  very  softly,  watching  the 
moving  figure  in  black  velvet  as  she  would  have  watched 
a  fellow  singer  on  the  stage  while  waiting  to  go  on. 

Lady  Maud  did  not  speak  to  Van  Torp  first,  but  to 
Griggs,  and  then  to  Logo  the  ti,  and  the  two  men  slipped 
away  together  and  disappeared.  Then  she  came  back 
to  Van  Torp,  smiling  pleasantly.  He  was  still  talking 
with  Lord  Creedmore,  but  the  latter,  at  a  word  from 


372  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

his  daughter,  went  off  to  the  elderly  peeress  whom 
Logotheti  had  abruptly  left  alone  before  the  portrait. 

Margaret  did  not  hear  what  Lady  Maud  said  to  the 
American,  but  it  was  evidently  not  yet  a  warning,  for 
her  smile  did  not  falter,  and  he  looked  pleased  as  he 
came  back  with  her,  and  they  passed  near  the  piano  to 
go  out  through  the  open  window  upon  the  broad  flagged 
terrace  that  separated  the  house  from  the  flower-beds. 

The  Primadonna  played  a  little  louder  now,  so  that 
every  one  heard  the  chords,  even  in  the  picture-gallery, 
and  a  good  many  men  were  rather  bored  at  the  prospect 
of  music. 

Then  the  Senorita  da  Cordova  raised  her  head  and 
looked  over  the  grand  piano,  and  her  lips  parted,  and 
boredom  vanished  very  suddenly;  for  even  those  who 
did  not  take  much  pleasure  in  the  music  were  amazed 
by  the  mere  sound  of  her  voice  and  by  its  incredible 
flexibility. 

She  meant  to  astonish  her  hearers  and  keep  them 
quiet,  and  she  knew  what  to  sing  to  gain  her  end,  and 
how  to  sing  it.  Those  who  have  not  forgotten  the 
story  of  her  beginnings  will  remember  that  she  was  a 
thorough  musician  as  well  as  a  great  singer,  and  was 
one  of  those  very  few  primadonnas  who  are  able  to 
accompany  themselves  from  memory  without  a  false 
note  through  any  great  piece  they  know,  from  Lucia 
to  Parsifal. 

She  began  with  the  waltz  song  in  the  first  act  of 
Romeo  and  Juliet.  It  was  the  piece  that  had  revealed 
her  talent  to  Madame  Bonanni,  who  had  accidentally 


CHAP,  xviii  THE   PKIMADONNA  373 

overheard  her  singing  to  herself,  and  it  suited  her  pur 
pose  admirably.  Such  fireworks  could  not  fail  to 
astound,  even  if  they  did  not  please,  and  half  the  full 
volume  of  her  voice  was  more  than  enough  for  the  long 
drawing-room,  into  which  the  whole  party  gathered 
almost  as  soon  as  she  began  to  sing.  Such  trifles  as 
having  just  dined,  or  having  just  waked  up  in  the 
morning,  have  little  influence  on  the  few  great  natural 
voices  of  the  world,  which  begin  with  twice  the  power 
and  beauty  that  the  ' built-up7  ones  acquire  in  years  of 
study.  Ordinary  people  go  to  a  concert,  to  the  opera, 
to  a  circus,  to  university  sports,  and  hear  and  see 
things  that  interest  or  charm,  or  sometimes  surprise 
them;  but  they  are  very  much  amazed  if  they  ever 
happen  to  find  out  in  private  life  what  a  really  great 
professional  of  any  sort  can  do  at  a  pinch,  if  put  to  it 
by  any  strong  motive.  If  it  had  been  necessary,  Mar 
garet  could  have  sung  to  the  party  in  the  drawing-room 
at  Craythew  for  an  hour  at  a  stretch  with  no  more  rest 
than  her  accompaniments  afforded. 

Her  hearers  were  the  more  delighted  because  it  was 
so  spontaneous,  and  there  was  not  the  least  affectation 
about  it.  During  these  days  no  one  had  even  suggested 
that  she  should  make  music,  or  be  anything  except 
the  'daughter  of  Lord  Creedmore's  old  friend.'  But 
now,  apparently,  she  had  sat  down  to  the  piano  to  give 
them  all  a  concert,  for  the  sheer  pleasure  of  singing, 
and  they  were  not  only  pleased  with  her,  but  with 
themselves;  for  the  public,  and  especially  audiences, 
are  more  easily  flattered  by  a  great  artist  who  chooses 


374  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

to  treat  his  hearers  as  worthy  of  his  best,  than  the  artist 
himself  is  by  the  applause  he  hears  for  the  thousandth 
time. 

So  the  Senorita  da  Cordova  held  the  party  at  Cray- 
thew  spellbound  while  other  things  were  happening 
very  near  them  which  would  have  interested  them  much 
more  than  her  trills,  and  her  'mordentini,'  and  her 
soaring  runs,  and  the  high  staccato  notes  that  rang 
down  from  the  ceiling  as  if  some  astounding  and  in 
visible  instrument  were  up  there,  supported  by  an 
unseen  force. 

Meanwhile  Paul  Griggs  and  Logotheti  had  stopped 
a  moment  in  the  first  of  the  rooms  that  contained  the 
library,  on  their  way  to  the  old  study  beyond. 

It  was  almost  dark  amongst  the  huge  oak  bookcases, 
and  both  men  stopped  at  the  same  moment  by  a  com 
mon  instinct,  to  agree  quickly  upon  some  plan  of  action. 
They  had  led  adventurous  lives,  and  were  not  likely 
to  stick  at  trifles,  if  they  believed  themselves  to  be  in 
the  right;  but  if  they  had  left  the  drawing-room  with 
the  distinct  expectation  of  anything  like  a  fight,  they 
would  certainly  not  have  stopped  to  waste  their  time 
in  talking. 

The  Greek  spoke  first. 

'Perhaps  you  had  better  let  me  do  the  talking/  he 


'By  all  means,'  answered  Griggs.  'I  am  not  good 
at  that.  I'll  keep  quiet,  unless  we  have  to  handle 
them.' 

'All  right,  and  if  you  have  any  trouble  I'll  join  in  and 


CHAP.  XVIII  THE   PRIMADONNA  375 

help  you.    Just  set  your  back  against  the  door  if  they 
try  to  get  out  while  I  am  speaking.' 

'Yes.' 

That  was  all,  and  they  went  on  in  the  gathering 
gloom,  through  the  three  rooms  of  the  library,  to  the 
door  of  the  old  study,  from  which  a  short  winding  stair 
case  led  up  to  the  two  small  rooms  which  Griggs  was 
occupying. 

Three  quiet  men  in  dark  clothes  were  standing  to 
gether  in  the  twilight,  in  the  bay  window  at  the  other 
side  of  the  room,  and  they  moved  and  turned  their 
heads  quickly  as  the  door  opened.  Logo  the  ti  went  up 
to  them,  while  Griggs  remained  near  the  door,  looking 
on. 

'What  can  I  do  for  you?'  inquired  the  Greek,  with 
much  urbanity. 

'We  wished  to  speak  with  Mr.  Van  Torp,  who  is  stop 
ping  here,'  answered  the  one  of  the  three  men  who 
stood  farthest  forward. 

'Oh  yes,  yes!'  said  Logo  the  ti  at  once,  as  if  assenting. 
'Certainly!    Lady    Maud    Leven,    Lord    Creedmore's 
daughter  —  Lady    Creedmore    is    away,    you    know  - 
has  asked  us  to  inquire  just  what  you  want  of  Mr.  Van 
Torp.' 

'It's  a  personal  matter,'  replied  the  spokesman.  'I 
will  explain  it  to  him,  if  you  will  kindly  ask  him  to 
come  here  a  moment.' 

Logotheti  smiled  pleasantly. 

'Quite  so/  he  said.  'You  are,  no  doubt,  reporters, 
and  wish  to  interview  him.  As  a  personal  friend  of 


376  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xviil 

his,  and  between  you  and  me,  I  don't  think  he'll  see 
you.  You  had  better  write  and  ask  for  an  appoint 
ment.  Don't  you  think  so,  Griggs?' 

The  author's  large,  grave  features  relaxed  in  a  smile 
of  amusement  as  he  nodded  his  approval  of  the  plan. 

'We  do  not  represent  the  press,'  answered  the  man. 

'Ah!    Indeed?    How  very  odd!     But  of  course - 
Logotheti  pretended   to  understand   suddenly  —  '  how 
stupid  of  me!    No  doubt  you  are  from  the  bank.    Am 
I  not  right?' 

'No.  You  are  mistaken.  We  are  not  from  Thread- 
needle  Street.' 

'Well,  then,  unless  you  will  enlighten  me,  I  really 
cannot  imagine  who  you  are  or  where  you  come  from!1 

'We  wish  to  speak  in  private  with  Mr.  Van  Torp.' 

'In  private,  too?'  Logotheti  shook  his  head,  and 
turned  to  Griggs.  'Really,  this  looks  rather  suspicious; 
don't  you  think  so?' 

Griggs  said  nothing,  but  the  smile  became  a  broad 
grin. 

The  spokesman,  on  his  side,  turned  to  his  two  com 
panions  and  wiiispered,  evidently  consulting  them  as 
to  the  course  he  should  pursue. 

'Especially  after  the  warning  Lord  Creedmore  has 
received,'  said  Logotheti  to  Griggs  in  a  very  audible 
tone,  as  if  explaining  his  last  speech. 

The  man  turned  to  him  again  and  spoke  in  a  gravely 
determined  tone  - 

'I  must  really  insist  upon  seeing  Mr.  Van  Torp  im 
mediately,'  he  said. 


CHAP.  XVHI  THE   PRIMADONNA  377 

'Yes,  yes,  I  quite  understand  you/  answered  Logo  the  ti, 
looking  at  him  with  a  rather  pitying  smile,  and  then 
turning  to  Griggs  again,  as  if  for  advice. 

The  elder  man  was  much  amused  by  the  ease  with 
which  the  Greek  had  so  far  put  off  the  unwelcome 
visitors  and  gamed  time;  but  he  saw  that  the  scene 
must  soon  come  to  a  crisis,  and  prepared  for  action, 
keeping  his  eye  on  the  three,  in  case  they  should  make 
a  dash  at  the  door  that  communicated  with  the  rest  of 
the  house. 

During  the  two  or  three  seconds  that  followed, 
Logotheti  reviewed  the  situation.  It  would  be  an  easy 
matter  to  trick  the  three  men  into  the  short  winding 
staircase  that  led  up  to  the  rooms  Griggs  occupied,  and 
if  the  upper  and  lower  doors  were  locked  and  barricaded, 
the  prisoners  could  not  forcibly  get  out.  But  it  was 
certain  that  the  leader  of  the  party  had  a  warrant 
about  him,  and  this  must  be  taken  from  him  before 
locking  him  up,  and  without  any  acknowledgment  of 
its  validity;  for  even  the  lawless  Greek  was  aware  that 
it  was  not  good  to  interfere  with  officers  of  the  law  in 
the  execution  of  their  duty.  If  there  had  been  more 
time  he  might  have  devised  some  better  means  of  attain 
ing  his  end  than  occurred  to  him  just  then. 

'They  must  be  the  lunatics/  he  said  to  Griggs,  with 
the  utmost  calm. 

The  spokesman  started  and  stared,  and  his  jaw 
dropped.  For  a  moment  he  could  not  speak. 

'You  know  Lord  Creedmore  was  warned  this  morn 
ing  that  a  number  had  escaped  from  the  county  asylum,' 


378  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvin 

continued  Logotheti,  still  speaking  to  Griggs,  and  pre 
tending  to  lower  his  voice. 

'Lunatics?'  roared  the  man  when  he  got  his  breath, 
exasperated  out  of  his  civil  manner.  'Lunatics,  sir? 
We  are  from  Scotland  Yard,  sir,  I'd  have  you  know!' 

'Yes,  yes,'  answered  the  Greek,  'we  quite  understand. 
Humour  them,  my  dear  chap/  he  added  in  an  under 
tone  that  was  meant  to  be  heard.  'Yes,'  he  continued 
in  a  cajoling  tone,  'I  guessed  at  once  that  you  were 
from  police  headquarters.  If  you'll  kindly  show  me 
your  warrant 

He  stopped  politely,  and  nudged  Griggs  with  his  elbow, 
so  that  the  detectives  should  be  sure  to  see  the  move 
ment.  The  chief  saw  the  awkwardness  of  his  own  po 
sition,  measured  the  bony  veteran  and  the  athletic 
foreigner  with  his  eye,  and  judged  that  if  the  two  were 
convinced  that  they  were  dealing  with  madmen  they 
would  make  a  pretty  good  fight. 

'Excuse  me/  the  officer  said,  speaking  calmly,  'but 
you  are  under  a  gross  misapprehension  about  us.  This 
paper  will  remove  it  at  once,  I  trust,  and  you  will  not 
hinder  us  in  the  performance  of  an  unpleasant  duty.' 

He  produced  an  official  envelope,  handed  it  to  Lo- 
gotheti,  and  waited  for  the  result. 

It  was  unexpected  when  it  came.  Logotheti  took  the 
paper,  and  as  it  was  now  almost  dark  he  looked  about 
for  the  key  of  the  electric  light.  Griggs  was  now  close 
to  him  by  the  door  through  which  they  had  entered, 
and  behind  which  the  knob  was  placed. 

'If  I  can  get  them  upstairs,  lock  and  barricade  the 


CHAP,  xviil  THE   PRIMADONNA  379 

lower  door/  whispered  the  Greek  as  he  turned  up  the 
light. 

He  took  the  paper  under  a  bracket  light  on  the  other 
side  of  the  room,  beside  the  door  of  the  winding  stair, 
and  began  to  read. 

His  face  was  a  study,  and  Griggs  watched  it,  wonder 
ing  what  was  coming.  As  Logotheti  read  and  reread 
the  few  short  sentences,  he  was  apparently  seized  by  a 
fit  of  mirth  which  he  struggled  in  vain  to  repress,  and 
which  soon  broke  out  into  uncontrollable  laughter. 

'The  cleverest  trick  you  ever  saw!'  he  managed  to 
get  out  between  his  paroxysms. 

It  was  so  well  done  that  the  detective  was  seriously  em 
barrassed;  but  after  a  moment's  hesitation  he  judged  that 
he  ought  to  get  his  warrant  back  at  all  hazards,  and  he 
moved  towards  Logotheti  with  a  menacing  expression. 

But  the  Greek,  pretending  to  be  afraid  that  the  sup 
posed  lunatic  was  going  to  attack  him,  uttered  an 
admirable  yell  of  fear,  opened  the  door  close  at  his 
hand,  rushed  through,  slammed  it  behind  him,  and  fled 
up  the  dark  stairs. 

The  detective  lost  no  time,  and  followed  in  hot 
pursuit,  his  two  companions  tearing  up  after  him  into 
the  darkness.  Then  Griggs  quietly  turned  the  key  in 
the  lock,  for  he  was  sure  that  Logotheti  had  reached  the 
top  in  time  to  fasten  the  upper  door,  and  must  be 
already  barricading  it.  Griggs  proceeded  to  do  the  same, 
quietly  and  systematically,  and  the  great  strength  he 
had  not  yet  lost  served  him  well,  for  the  furniture  in  the 
room  was  heavy.  In  a  couple  of  minutes  it  would  have 


380  THE   PKIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvni 

needed  sledge-hammers  and  crowbars  to  break  out  by 
the  lower  entrance,  even  if  the  lock  had  not  been  a 
solid  one. 

Griggs  then  turned  out  the  lights,  and  went  quietly 
back  through  the  library  to  the  other  part  of  the  house 
to  find  Lady  Maud. 

Logotheti,  having  meanwhile  made  the  upper  door 
perfectly  secure,  descended  by  the  open  staircase  to 
the  hall,  and  sent  the  first  footman  he  met  to  call  the 
butler,  with  whom  he  said  he  wished  to  speak.  The 
butler  came  at  once. 

'Lady  Maud  asked  me  to  see  those  three  men/  said 
Logo  the  ti  in  a  low  tone.  'Mr.  Griggs  and  I  are  con 
vinced  that  they  are  lunatics  escaped  from  the  asylum, 
and  we  have  locked  them  up  securely  in  the  staircase 
beyond  the  study.' 

'Yes,  sir/  said  the  butler,  as  if  Logotheti  had  been 
explaining  how  he  wished  his  shoe-leather  to  be  treated. 

'I  think  you  had  better  telephone  for  the  doctor,  and 
explain  everything  to  him  over  the  wire  without  speak 
ing  to  Lord  Creedmore  just  yet.7 

'Yes,  sir.' 

'How  long  will  it  take  the  doctor  to  get  here?' 

'Perhaps  an  hour,  sir,  if  he's  at  home.  Couldn't  say 
precisely,  sir.' 

'Very  good.  There  is  no  hurry;  and  of  course  her 
ladyship  will  be  particularly  anxious  that  none  of  her 
friends  should  guess  what  has  happened;  you  see  there 
would  be  a  general  panic  if  it  were  known  that  there 
are  escaped  lunatics  in  the  house.' 


CHAP,  xvni  THE  PRIMADONNA  381 

'  Yes,  sir.' 

'  Perhaps  you  had  better  take  a  couple  of  men  you  can 
trust,  and  pile  up  some  more  furniture  against  the  doors, 
above  and  below.  One  cannot  be  too  much  on  the  safe 
side  in  such  cases/ 

'Yes,  sir.    I'll  do  it  at  once,  sir/ 

Logotheti  strolled  back  towards  the  gallery  in  a  very 
unconcerned  way.  As  for  the  warrant,  he  had  burnt 
it  in  the  empty  fireplace  in  Griggs'  room  after  making 
all  secure,  and  had  dusted  down  the  black  ashes  so 
carefully  that  they  had  quite  disappeared  under  the 
grate.  After  all,  as  the  doctor  would  arrive  in  the  firm 
expectation  of  finding  three  escaped  madmen  under 
lock  and  key,  the  Scotland  Yard  men  might  have  some 
difficulty  in  proving  themselves  sane  until  they  could 
communicate  with  their  headquarters,  and  by  that  time 
Mr.  Van  Torp  could  be  far  on  his  way  if  he  chose. 

When  Logotheti  reached  the  door  of  the  drawing- 
room,  Margaret  was  finishing  Rosina's  Cavatina  from 
the  Barbiere  di  Siviglia  in  a  perfect  storm  of  fireworks, 
having  transposed  the  whole  piece  two  notes  higher 
to  suit  her  own  voice,  for  it  was  originally  written  for  a 
mezzo-soprano. 

Lady  Maud  and  Van  Torp  had  gone  out  upon  the 
terrace  unnoticed  a  moment  before  Margaret  had  begun 
to  sing.  The  evening  was  still  and  cloudless,  and 
presently  the  purple  twilight  would  pale  under  the  sum 
mer  moon,  and  the  garden  and  the  lawns  would  be 
once  more  as  bright  as  day.  The  friends  walked  quickly, 
for  Lady  Maud  set  the  pace  and  led  Van  Torp  toward 


382  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

the  trees,  where  the  stables  stood,  quite  hidden  from 
the  house.  As  soon  as  she  reached  the  shade  she  stood 
still  and  spoke  in  a  low  voice. 

'You  have  waited  too  long/  she  said.  ' Three  men 
have  come  to  arrest  you,  and  their  motor  is  ovei  there 
in  the  avenue.' 

1  Where  are  they?'  inquired  the  American,  evidently 
not  at  all  disturbed.  'I'll  see  them  at  once,  please.' 

'And  give  yourself  up?' 

'I  don't  care.' 

'Here?' 

'Why  not?  Do  you  suppose  I  am  going  to  run  away? 
A  man  who  gets  out  in  a  hurry  doesn't  usually  look 
innocent,  does  he?' 

Lady  Maud  asserted  herself. 

'You  must  think  of  me  and  of  my  father,'  she  said  in 
a  tone  of  authority  Van  Torp  had  never  heard  from  her. 
'I  know  you're  as  innocent  as  I  am,  but  after  all  that 
has  been  said  and  written  about  you,  and  about  you  and 
me  together,  it's  quite  impossible  that  you  should  let 
yourself  be  arrested  in  our  house,  in  the  midst  of  a  party 
that  has  been  asked  here  expressly  to  be  convinced  that 
my  father  approves  of  you.  Do  you  see  that?' 

'Well  -  '  Mr.  Van  Torp  hesitated,  with  his  thumbs 
in  his  waistcoat  pockets. 

Across  the  lawn,  from  the  open  window,  Margaret's 
voice  rang  out  like  a  score  of  nightingales  in  unison. 

'There's  no  time  to  discuss  it,'  Lady  Maud  said.  'I 
asked  her  to  sing,  so  as  to  keep  the  people  together. 
Before  she  has  finished,  you  must  be  out  of  reach.' 


CHAP.  XVIII  THE   PR1MADONNA  383 

Mr.  Van  Torp  smiled.  'You're  remarkably  positive 
about  it/  he  said. 

'You  must  get  to  town  before  the  Scotland  Yard 
people,  and  I  don't  know  how  much  start  they  will 
give  you.  It  depends  on  how  long  Mr.  Griggs  and 
Logotheti  can  keep  them  in  the  old  study.  It  will  be 
neck  and  neck,  I  fancy.  I'll  go  with  you  to  the  stables. 
You  must  ride  to  your  own  place  as  hard  as  you  can, 
and  go  up  to  London  in  your  car  to-night.  The  roads 
are  pretty  clear  on  Sundays,  and  there's  moonlight,  so 
you  will  have  no  trouble.  It  will  be  easy  to  say  here 
that  you  have  been  called  away  suddenly.  Come,  you 
must  go!' 

Lady  Maud  moved  towards  the  stables,  and  Van  Torp 
was  obliged  to  follow  her.  Far  away  Margaret  was 
singing  the  last  bars  of  the  waltz  song. 

'I  must  say,'  observed  Mr.  Van  Torp  thoughtfully, 
as  they  walked  on,  'for  a  lady  who's  generally  what  I 
call  quite  feminine,  you  make  a  man  sit  up  pretty 
quick.' 

'It's  not  exactly  the  time  to  choose  for  loafing/ 
answered  Lady  Maud.  'By  the  bye/  she  added,  'you 
may  as  well  know.  Poor  Leven  is  dead.  I  had  a 
telegram  a  few  minutes  ago.  He  was  killed  yesterday 
by  a  bomb  meant  for  somebody  else.' 

Van  Torp  stood  still,  and  Lady  Maud  stopped  with 
evident  reluctance. 

'And  there  are  people  who  don't  believe  in  Provi 
dence/  he  said  slowly.  'Well,  I  congratulate  you  any 
way/ 


384  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvm 

'Hush,  the  poor  man  is  dead.  We  needn't  talk  about 
him.  Come,  there's  no  time  to  lose!7  She  moved 
impatiently. 

'So  you're  a  widow!'  Van  Torp  seemed  to  be  mak 
ing  the  remark  to  himself  without  expecting  any  answer, 
but  it  at  once  suggested  a  question.  'And  now  what 
do  you  propose  to  do?'  he  inquired.  'But  I  expect 
you'll  be  a  nun,  or  something.  I'd  like  you  to  arrange 
so  that  I  can  see  you  sometimes,  will  you?' 

'I'm  not  going  to  disappear  yet,'  Lady  Maud  answered 
gravely. 

They  reached  the  stables,  which  occupied  three  sides 
of  a  square  yard.  At  that  hour  the  two  grooms  and  the 
stable-boy  were  at  their  supper,  and  the  coachman  had 
gone  home  to  his  cottage.  A  big  brown  retriever  on  a 
chain  was  sitting  bolt  upright  beside  his  kennel,  and 
began  to  thump  the  flagstones  with  his  tail  as  soon  as 
he  recognised  Lady  Maud.  From  within  a  fox-terrier 
barked  two  or  three  times.  Lady  Maud  opened  a  door, 
and  he  sprang  out  at  her  yapping,  but  was  quiet  as  soon 
as  he  knew  her. 

'You'd  better  take  the  Lancashire  Lass/ she  said  to 
Van  Torp.  'You're  heavier  than  my  father,  but  it's 
not  far  to  ride,  and  she's  a  clever  creature.' 

She  had  turned  up  the  electric  light  while  speaking,  for 
it  was  dark  inside  the  stable;  she  got  a  bridle,  went  into 
the  box  herself,  and  slipped  it  over  the  mare's  pretty 
head.  Van  Torp  saw  that  it  was  useless  to  offer  help. 

'Don't  bother  about  a  saddle,'  he  said;  'it's  a  waste 
of  time.' 


CHAP,  xvm  THE   PRIMADONNA  385 

He  touched  the  mare's  face  and  lips  with  his  hand, 
and  she  understood  him,  and  let  him  lead  her  out.  He 
vaulted  upon  her  back,  and  Lady  Maud  walked  beside 
him  till  they  were  outside  the  yard. 

'It  you  had  a  high  hat  it  would  look  like  the  circus/ 
she  said,  glancing  at  his  evening  dress.  'Now  get  away! 
I'll  be  in  town  on  Tuesday;  let  me  know  what  happens. 
Good-bye!  Be  sure  to  let  me  know.' 

'Yes.  Don't  worry.  I'm  only  going  because  you 
insist,  anyhow.  Good-bye.  God  bless  you!' 

He  waved  his  hand,  the  mare  sprang  forward,  and  in 
a  few  seconds  he  was  out  of  sight  amongst  the  trees. 
Lady  Maud  listened  to  the  regular  sound  of  the  gallop 
ing  hoofs  on  the  turf,  and  at  the  same  time  from  very 
far  off  she  heard  Margaret's  high  trills  and  quick  staccato 
notes.  At  that  moment  the  moon  was  rising  through 
the  late  twilight,  and  a  nightingale  high  overhead,  no 
doubt  judging  her  little  self  to  be  quite  as  great  a  musi 
cian  as  the  famous  Cordova,  suddenly  began  a  very 
wonderful  piece  of  her  own,  just  half  a  tone  higher  than 
Margaret's,  which  might  have  distressed  a  sensitive 
musician,  but  did  not  jar  in  the  least  on  Lady  Maud's 
ear. 

Now  that  she  had  sent  Van  Torp  on  his  way,  she  would 
gladly  have  walked  alone  in  the  park  for  half  an  hour  to 
collect  her  thoughts;  but  people  who  live  in  the  world 
are  rarely  allowed  any  pleasant  leisure  when  they  need 
it,  and  many  of  the  most  dramatic  things  in  real  life 
happen  when  we  are  in  such  a  hurry  that  we  do  not 
half  understand  them.  So  the  moment  that  should 


386  THE  PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xvin 

have  been  the  happiest  of  all  goes  dashing  by  when  we 
are  hastening  to  catch  a  train;  so  the  instant  of  triumph 
after  years  of  labour  or  weeks  of  struggling  is  upon  us 
when  we  are  perhaps  positively  obliged  to  write  three 
important  notes  in  twenty  minutes:  and  sometimes,  too, 
and  mercifully,  the  pain  of  parting  is  numbed  just  as 
the  knife  strikes  the  nerve,  by  the  howling  confusion  of 
a  railway  station  that  forces  us  to  take  care  of  ourselves 
and  our  belongings;  and  when  the  first  instant  of  joy, 
or  victory,  or  acute  suffering  is  gone  in  a  flash,  memory 
never  quite  brings  back  all  the  happiness  nor  all  the 
pain. 

Lady  Maud  could  not  have  stayed  away  many  minutes 
longer.  She  went  back  at  once,  entered  by  the  garden 
window  just  as  Margaret  was  finishing  Rosina's  song, 
and  remained  standing  behind  her  till  she  had  sung  the 
last  note.  English  people  rarely  applaud  conventional 
drawing-room  music,  but  this  had  been  something  more, 
and  the  Craythew  guests  clapped  their  hands  loudly,  and 
even  the  elderly  wife  of  the  scientific  peer  emitted  dis 
tinctly  audible  sounds  of  satisfaction.  Lady  Maud  bent 
her  handsome  head  and  kissed  the  singer  affectionately, 
whispering  words  of  heartfelt  thanks. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THROUGH  the  mistaken  efforts  of  Isidore  Bamberger, 
justice  had  got  herself  into  difficulties,  and  it  was  as  well 
for  her  reputation,  which  is  not  good  nowadays,  that 
the  public  never  heard  what  happened  on  that  night 
at  Craythew,  how  the  three  best  men  who  had  been 
available  at  headquarters  were  discomfited  in  their  well- 
meant  attempt  to  arrest  an  innocent  man,  and  how  they 
spent  two  miserable  hours  together  locked  up  in  a  dark 
winding  staircase.  For  it  chanced,  as  it  will  chance 
to  the  end  of  time,  that  the  doctor  was  out  when  the 
butler  telephoned  to  him;  it  happened,  too,  that  he  was 
far  from  home,  engaged  in  ushering  a  young  gentleman 
of  prosperous  parentage  into  this  world,  an  action  of 
which  the  kindness  might  be  questioned,  considering 
that  the  poor  little  soul  presumably  came  straight  from 
paradise,  with  an  indifferent  chance  of  ever  getting  there 
again.  So  the  doctor  could  not  come. 

The  three  men  were  let  out  in  due  time,  however,  and 
as  no  trace  of  a  warrant  could  be  discovered  at  that 
hour,  Logotheti  and  Griggs  being  already  sound  asleep, 
and  as  Lord  Creedmore,  in  his  dressing-gown  and  slippers, 
gave  them  a  written  statement  to  the  effect  that  Mr. 
Van  Torp  was  no  longer  at  Craythew,  they  had  no  choice 
but  to  return  to  town,  rather  the  worse  for  wear.  What 

387 


388  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XIX 

they  said  to  each  other  by  the  way  may  safely  be  left 
to  the  inexhaustible  imagination  of  a  gentle  and  sym 
pathising  reader. 

Their  suppressed  rage,  their  deep  mortification,  and 
their  profound  disgust  were  swept  away  in  their  over 
whelming  amazement,  however,  when  they  found  that 
Mr.  Rufus  Van  Torp,  whom  they  had  sought  in  Derby 
shire,  was  in  Scotland  Yard  before  them,  closeted  with 
their  Chief  and  explaining  what  an  odd  mistake  the 
justice  of  two  nations  had  committed  in  suspecting  him 
to  have  been  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera-House  in  New 
York  at  the  time  of  the  explosion,  since  he  had  spent  that 
very  evening  in  Washington,  in  the  private  study  of  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  wanted  his  confidential 
opinion  on  a  question  connected  with  Trusts  before  he 
went  abroad.  Mr.  Van  Torp  stuck  his  thumbs  into  his 
waistcoat  pockets  and  blandly  insisted  that  the  cables 
should  be  kept  red-hot  —  at  international  expense  — 
till  the  member  of  the  Cabinet  in  Washington  should 
answer  corroborating  the  statement.  Four  o'clock  in  the 
morning  in  London  was  only  eleven  o'clock  of  the  previ 
ous  evening,  Mr.  Van  Torp  explained,  and  it  was  ex 
tremely  unlikely  that  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
should  be  in  bed  so  early.  If  he  was,  he  was  certainly 
not  asleep;  and  with  the  facilities  at  the  disposal  of 
governments  there  was  no  reason  why  the  answer  should 
not  come  back  in  forty  minutes. 

It  was  imposssible  to  resist  such  simple  logic.  The 
lines  were  cleared  for  urgent  official  business  between 
London  and  Washington,  and  in  less  than  an  hour  the 


CHAP,  xix  THE   PRIMADONNA  389 

answer  came  back,  to  the  effect  that  Mr.  Rufus  Van 
Torp's  statement  was  correct  in  every  detail;  and  with 
out  any  interval  another  official  message  arrived,  revok 
ing  the  request  for  his  extradition,  which  'had  been 
made  under  a  most  unfortunate  misapprehension,  due 
to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Van  Torp's  visit  to  the  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  had  been  regarded  as  confidential  by 
the  latter.' 

Scotland  Yard  expressed  its  regret,  and  Mr.  Van  Torp 
smiled  and  begged  to  be  allowed,  before  leaving,  to 
' shake  hands'  with  the  three  men  who  had  been  put 
to  so  much  inconvenience  on  his  account.  This  demo 
cratic  proposal  was  promptly  authorised,  to  the  no  small 
satisfaction  and  profit  of  the  three  haggard  officials. 
So  Mr.  Van  Torp  went  away,  and  in  a  few  minutes  he 
was  sound  asleep  in  the  corner  of  his  big  motor-car  on 
his  way  back  to  Derbyshire. 

Lady  Maud  found  Margaret  and  Logotheti  walking 
slowly  together  under  the  trees  about  eleven  o'clock  on 
the  following  morning.  Some  of  the  people  were  already 
gone,  and  most  of  the  others  were  to  leave  in  the  course 
of  the  day.  Lady  Maud  had  just  said  good-bye  to  a 
party  of  ten  who  were  going  off  together,  and  she  had 
not  had  a  chance  to  speak  to  Margaret,  who  had  come 
down  late,  after  her  manner.  Most  great  singers  are 
portentous  sleepers.  As  for  Logotheti,  he  always  had 
coffee  in  his  room  wherever  he  was,  he  never  appeared 
at  breakfast,  and  he  got  rid  of  his  important  corre 
spondence  for  the  day  before  coming  down. 

'I've  had  a  letter  from  Threlfall,'  he  said  as  Lady 


390  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XIX 

Maud  came  up.  'I  was  just  telling  Miss  Donne  about 
it.  Feist  died  in  Dr.  Bream's  Home  yesterday  after 
noon.' 

' Rather  unfortunate  at  this  juncture,  isn't  it?7  ob 
served  Margaret. 

But  Lady  Maud  looked  shocked  and  glanced  at  Logo- 
theti  as  if  asking  a  question. 

'No/  said  the  Greek,  answering  her  thought.  'I  did 
not  kill  him,  poor  devil!  He  did  it  himself,  out  of  fright, 
I  think.  So  that  side  of  the  affair  ends.  He  had  some 
sealed  glass  capsules  of  hydrocyanide  of  potassium  in 
little  brass  tubes,  sewn  up  in  the  lining  of  a  waistcoat, 
and  he  took  one,  and  must  have  died  instantly.  I  be 
lieve  the  stuff  turns  into  prussic  acid,  or  something  of 
that  sort,  when  you  swallow  it  —  Griggs  will  know.' 

'How  dreadful!'  exclaimed  Lady  Maud.  'I'm  sure 
you  drove  him  to  it!' 

'I'll  bear  the  responsibility  of  having  rid  the  world 
of  him,  if  I  did.  But  my  share  consisted  in  having 
given  him  opium  and  then  stopped  it  suddenly,  till  he 
surrendered  and  told  the  truth  —  or  a  large  part  of  it  — 
what  I  have  told  you  already.  He  would  not  own  that 
he  killed  Miss  Bamberger  himself  with  the  rusty  little 
knife  that  had  a  few  red  silk  threads  sticking  to  the 
handle.  He  must  have  put  it  back  into  his  case  of  in 
struments  as  it  was,  and  he  never  had  the  courage  to 
look  at  it  again.  He  had  studied  medicine,  I  believe. 
But  he  confessed  everything  else,  how  he  had  been 
madly  in  love  with  the  poor  girl  when  he  was  her  father's 
secretary,  and  how  she  treated  him  like  a  servant  and 


CHAP.  XIX  THE   PRIMADONNA  391 

made  her  father  turn  him  out,  and  how  he  hated  Van 
Torp  furiously  for  being  engaged  to  marry  her.  He 
hated  the  Nickel  Trust,  too,  because  he  had  thought 
the  shares  were  going  down  and  had  risked  the  little  he 
had  as  margin  on  a  drop,  and  had  lost  it  all  by  the  unex 
pected  rise.  He  drank  harder  after  that,  till  he  was 
getting  silly  from  it,  when  the  girl's  death  gave  him  his 
chance  against  Van  Torp,  and  he  manufactured  the  evi 
dence  in  the  diary  he  kept,  and  went  to  Bamberger  with 
it  and  made  the  poor  man  believe  whatever  he  invented. 
He  told  me  all  that,  with  a  lot  of  details,  but  I  could  not 
make  him  admit  that  he  had  killed  the  girl  himself,  so 
I  gave  him  his  opium  and  he  went  to  sleep.  That's  my 
story.  Or  rather,  it's  his,  as  I  got  it  from  him  last 
Thursday.  I  supposed  there  was  plenty  of  time,  but 
Mr.  Bamberger  seems  to  have  been  in  a  hurry  after  we 
had  got  Feist  into  the  Home.' 

'Had  you  told  Mr.  Van  Torp  all  this?'  asked  Lady 
Maud  anxiously. 

'No/  Logotheti  answered.  'I  was  keeping  the  infor 
mation  ready  in  case  it  should  be  needed.' 

A  familiar  voice  spoke  behind  them. 

'Well,  it's  all  right  as  it  is.  Much  obliged,  all  the 
same.' 

All  three  turned  suddenly  and  saw  that  Mr.  Van  Torp 
had  crept  up  while  they  were  talking,  and  the  expression 
of  his  tremendous  mouth  showed  that  he  had  meant  to 
surprise  them,  and  was  pleased  with  his  success  in  doing 
so. 

'Really!'  exclaimed  Lady  Maud. 


392  THE   PHIMADONNA  CHAP.  XES 

'Goodness  gracious!'  cried  the  Primadonna. 

'By  the  Dog  of  Egypt!'  laughed  Logotheti. 

'Don't  know  the  breed/  answered  Van  Torp,  not 
understanding,  but  cheerfully  playful.  'Was  it  a  trick 
dog?' 

'I  thought  you  were  in  London,'  Margaret  said. 

'I  was.  Between  one  and  four  this  morning,  I  should 
say.  It's  all  right.'  He  nodded  to  Lady  Maud  as  he 
spoke  the  last  words,  but  he  did  not  seem  inclined  to 
say  more. 

'  Is  it  a  secret  ?*  she  asked. 

'I  never  have  secrets,'  answered  the  millionaire. 
'Secrets  are  everything  that  must  be  found  out  and  put 
in  the  paper  right  away,  ain't  they?  But  I  had  no 
trouble  at  all,  only  the  bother  of  waiting  till  the  office 
got  an  answer  from  the  other  side.  I  happened  to 
remember  where  I'd  spent  the  evening  of  the  explosion, 
that's  all,  and  they  cabled  sharp  and  found  my  statement 
correct.' 

'Why  did  you  never  tell  me?'  asked  Lady  Maud 
reproachfully.  'You  knew  how  anxious  I  was!' 

'Well,'  replied  Mr.  Van  Torp,  dwelling  long  on  the 
syllable,  'I  did  tell  you  it  was  all  right  anyhow,  what 
ever  they  did,  and  I  thought  maybe  you'd  accept  the 
statement.  The  man  I  spent  that  evening  with  is  a 
public  man,  and  he  mightn't  exactly  think  our  inter 
view  was  anybody  else's  business,  might  he?; 

'And  you  say  you  never  keep  a  secret!' 

The  delicious  ripple  was  in  Lady  Maud's  sweet  voice 
as  she  spoke.  Perhaps  it  came  a  little  in  spite  of  herself, 


CHAP.  XIX  THE    PRIMADONNA  393 

and  she  would  certainly  have  controlled  her  tone  if  she 
had  thought  of  Leven  just  then.  But  she  was  a  very 
natural  creature,  after  all,  and  she  could  not  and  would 
not  pretend  to  be  sorry  that  he  was  dead,  though  the 
manner  of  his  end  had  seemed  horrible  to  her  when  she 
had  been  able  to  think  over  the  news,  after  Van  Torp 
had  got  safely  away.  So  far  there  had  only  been  three 
big  things  in  her  life :  her  love  for  a  man  who  was  dead, 
her  tremendous  determination  to  do  some  real  good  for 
his  memory's  sake,  and  her  deep  gratitude  to  Van  Torp, 
who  had  made  that  good  possible,  and  who,  strangely 
enough,  seemed  to  her  the  only  living  person  who  really 
understood  her  and  liked  her  for  her  own  sake,  without 
the  least  idea  of  making  love.  And  she  saw  in  him  what 
few  suspected,  except  little  Ida  and  Miss  More  —  the 
real  humanity  and  faithful  kindness  that  dwelt  in  the 
terribly  hard  and  coarse-grained  righting  financier. 
Lady  Maud  had  her  faults,  no  doubt,  but  she  was  too  big, 
morally,  to  be  disturbed  by  what  seemed  to  Margaret 
Donne  an  intolerable  vulgarity  of  manner  and  speech. 

As  for  Margaret,  she  now  felt  that  painful  little  re 
morse  that  hurts  us  when  we  realise  that  we  have  sus 
pected  an  innocent  person  of  something  dreadful,  even 
though  we  may  have  contributed  to  the  ultimate  triumph 
of  the  truth.  Van  Torp  unconsciously  deposited  a  coal 
of  fire  on  her  head. 

1  I'd  just  like  to  say  how  much  I  appreciate  your  kind 
ness  in  singing  last  night,  Madame  da  Cordova,'  he  said. 
'From  what  you  knew  and  told  me  on  the  steamer,  you 
might  have  had  a  reasonable  doubt,  and  I  couldn't  very 


394  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP,  xix 

well  explain  it  away  before.  I  wish  you'd  some  day 
tell  me  what  I  can  do  for  you.  I'm  grateful,  honestly/ 

Margaret  saw  that  he  was  much  in  earnest,  and  as 
she  felt  that  she  had  done  him  great  injustice,  she  held 
out  her  hand  with  a  frank  smile. 

'I'm  glad  I  was  able  to  be  of  use/  she  said.  'Come 
and  see  me  in  town/ 

'Really?    You  won't  throw  me  out  if  I  do?' 

Margaret  laughed. 

'No,  I  won't  throw  you  out!' 

'Then  I'll  come  some  day.     Thank  you/ 

Van  Torp  had  long  given  up  all  hope  that  she  would 
ever  marry  him,  but  it  was  something  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  her  again,  and  for  the  sake  of  that  alone  he 
would  have  risked  a  good  deal. 

The  four  paired  off,  and  Lady  Maud  walked  in  front 
with  Van  Torp,  while  Margaret  and  Logotheti  followed 
more  slowly;  so  the  couples  did  not  long  keep  near  one 
another,  and  in  less  than  five  minutes  they  lost  each 
other  altogether  among  the  trees. 

Margaret  had  noticed  something  very  unusual  in  the 
Greek's  appearance  when  they  had  met  half  an  hour 
earlier,  and  she  had  been  amazed  when  she  realised  that 
he  wore  no  jewellery,  no  ruby,  no  emeralds,  no  diamonds, 
no  elaborate  chain,  and  that  his  tie  was  neither  green, 
yellow,  sky-blue,  nor  scarlet,  but  of  a  soft  dove  grey 
which  she  liked  very  much.  The  change  was  so  sur 
prising  that  she  had  been  on  the  point  of  asking  him 
whether  anything  dreadful  had  happened;  but  just  then 
Lady  Maud  had  come  up  with  them. 


CHAP,  xix  THE   PRIMADONNA  395 

They  walked  a  little  way  now,  and  when  the  others 
were  out  of  sight  Margaret  sat  down  on  one  of  the  many 
boulders  that  strewed  the  park.  Her  companion  stood 
before  her,  and  while  he  lit  a  cigarette  she  surveyed  him 
deliberately  from  head  to  foot.  Her  fresh  lips  twitched 
as  they  did  when  she  was  near  laughing,  and  she  looked 
up  and  met  his  eyes. 

'What  in  the  world  has  happened  to  you  since  yester 
day?'  she  asked  in  a  tone  of  lazy  amusement.  'You 
look  almost  like  a  human  being!' 

'Do  I?'  he  asked,  between  two  small  puffs  of  smoke, 
and  he  laughed  a  little. 

'Yes.    Are  you  in  mourning  for  your  lost  illusions?7 

'No.  I'm  trying  "to  create  and  foster  agreeable 
illusions"  in  you.  That's  the  object  of  all  art,  you 
know.' 

'  Oh !    It's  for  me,  then  ?    Really  ? ' 

'Yes.  Everything  is.  I  thought  I  had  explained 
that  the  other  night!'  His  tone  was  perfectly  uncon 
cerned,  and  he  smiled  carelessly  as  he  spoke. 

'I  wonder  what  would  happen  if  I  took  you  at  your 
word,'  said  Margaret,  more  thoughtfully  than  she  had 
spoken  yet. 

'I  don't  know.  You  might  not  regret  it.  You  might 
even  be  happy!' 

There  was  a  little  silence,  and  Margaret  looked  down. 

'I'm  not  exactly  miserable  as  it  is,'  she  said  at  last. 
'Are  you?' 

'Oh  no!'  answered  Logotheti.  'I  should  bore  you 
if  I  were!' 


396  THE   PRIMADONNA  CHAP.  XEC 

' Awfully!'  She  laughed  rather  abruptly.  ' Should 
you  want  me  to  leave  the  stage?'  she  asked  after  a 
moment. 

'You  forget  that  I  like  the  Cordova  just  as  much  as 
I  like  Margaret  Donne.' 

'Are  you  quite  sure?' 

'Absolutely!' 

'Let's  try  it!1 


THE   END 


Mr.  F.  MARION  CRAWFORD'S 

LATEST  NOVEL 

Arethusa 

One  of  the  most  spirited  tales  this  born  story-teller  of  wide 
knowledge  and  versatility  has  ever  constructed. 

Its  scenes  are  laid  in  Constantinople  when  the  constant  plot 
ting  of  the  fourteenth  century  made  adventures  an  every-day 
possibility. 

Its  hero  is  an  exiled  Venetian  noble,  inclining  toward  the  Revo 
lutionary  side  in  Byzantine  politics  ;  and  toward  a  girl  whom  he 
has  had  a  commission  to  purchase  as  a  slave,  in  affairs  of  love. 

Its  characters  include  among  others  a  Persian  slave-dealer,  a 
Turkish  astrologer,  the  two  Emperors,  Andronicus  and  his 
imprisoned  son,  Johannes,  and  Tocktamish,  a  Tartar  merce 
nary,  —  a  cosmopolitan  assembly  in  which  the  author  of  "  Paul 
Patoff,"  "The  Witch  of  Prague,"  and  of  "Marietta"  is  well  at 
home. 

Dr.  Frederick  Taber  Cooper,  in  The  Bookman,  says  of  this 
author :  "  In  theory  Mr.  Crawford  is  a  romanticist ;  in  practice 
he  is  in  turn  realist,  psychologue,  mystic,  whatever  for  the  mo 
ment  suits  his  needs  or  appeals  to  his  instinct  of  born  story 
teller."  He  calls  him,  in  fact,  as  others  have  done,  "  the  prince 
of  story-tellers." 
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Saracinesca 

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great,  —  that  of  telling  a  perfect  story  in  a  perfect  way,  and  of  giving  a 
graphic  picture  of  Roman  society  in  the  last  days  of  the  Pope's  temporal 
power.  .  .  .  The  story  is  exquisitely  told."  —  Boston  Traveler. 

Sant*   Ilario*      A  Sequel  to  "Saracinesca" 

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of  artistic  fiction.  It  brings  out  what  is  most  impressive  in  human  action, 
without  owing  any  of  its  effectiveness  to  sensationalism  or  artifice.  It  is 
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tion,  penetrating  in  analysis,  and  absorbing  in  interest."  —  New  York 
Tribune. 

Don   OrSinO*      A  Sequel  to  "Sant'  Ilario" 

"  Perhaps  the  cleverest  novel  of  the  year.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  dull  para 
graph  in  the  book,  and  the  reader  may  be  assured  that  once  begun,  the 
story  of  Don  Orsino  will  fascinate  him  until  its  close."  —  The  Critic. 

Taquisara 

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subtly  drawn  characters  to  a  plot  of  uncommon  interest."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

Corleone 

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imagination,  and  insight  added  to  a  varied  and  profound  knowledge  of 
social  life." —  The  Inter- Ocean,  Chicago. 

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but  a  genuine  artist  could  have  made  so  true  a  picture  of  human  life,  crossed 
by  human  passions  and  interwoven  with  human  weakness.  It  is  a  perfect 
specimen  of  literary  art." —  The  Newark  Advertiser. 

Marzio's  Crucifix 

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an  extraordinary  degree  the  art  of  constructing  a  story.  It  is  as  if  it  could 
not  have  been  written  otherwise,  so  naturally  does  the  story  unfold  itself, 
and  so  logical  and  consistent  is  the  sequence  of  incident  after  incident.  As 
a  story,  Marzio's  Crucifix  is  perfectly  constructed."  —  New  York  Commer 
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Heart   of  Rome*      A  Tale  of  the  Lost  Water 

"  Mr.  Crawford  has  written  a  story  of  absorbing  interest,  a  story  with  a 
genuine  thrill  in  it  ;  he  has  drawn  his  characters  with  a  sure  and  brilliant 
touch,  and  he  has  said  many  things  surpassingly  well." —  Neiv  York  Times 
Saturday  Review. 

Cecilia*      A  Story  of  Modern  Rome 

"  That  F.  Marion  Crawford  is  a  master  of  mystery  needs  no  new  telling. .  . . 
His  latest  novel,  Cecilia,  is  as  weird  as  anything  he  has  done  since  the 
memorable  Mr.  Isaacs.  ...  A  strong,  interesting,  dramatic  story,  with 
the  picturesque  Roman  setting  beautifully  handled  as  only  a  master's  touch 
could  do  it."  —  Philadelphia  Evening  Telegraph. 

Whosoever  Shall  Offend 

"  It  is  a  story  sustained  from  beginning  to  end  by  an  ever  increasing  dra 
matic  quality.  "  —  New  York  Evening  Post. 

Pietro  Ghisleri 

"  The  imaginative  richness,  the  marvellous  ingenuity  of  plot,  the  power  and 
subtlety  of  the  portrayal  of  character,  the  charm  of  the  romantic  environ 
ment, —  the  entire  atmosphere,  indeed,  —  rank  this  novel  at  once  among 
the  great  creations." —  The  Boston  Budget. 

To  Leeward 

"The  four  characters  with  whose  fortunes  this  novel  deals  are,  perhaps, 
the  most  brilliantly  executed  portraits  in  the  whole  of  Mr.  Crawford's  long 
picture  gallery,  while  for  subtle  insight  into  the  springs  of  human  passion 
and  for  swift  dramatic  action  none  of  the  novels  surpasses  this  one."  —  The 
News  and  Courier. 


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A  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish 

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vivid  story.  ...  It  is  doubly  a  success,  being  full  of  human  sympathy,  as 
well  as  thoroughly  artistic  in  its  nice  balancing  of  the  unusual  with  the 
commonplace,  the  clever  juxtaposition  of  innocence  and  guilt,  comedy 
and  tragedy,  simplicity  and  intrigue."  —  Critic. 

Dr*    Claudius.      A  True  Story 

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develops  during  the  ocean  voyage. 

"There  is  a  satisfying  quality  in  Mr.  Crawford's  strong,  vital,  forceful 
stories."  —  Boston.  Herald. 

An   American   Politician.        The  scenes  are  laid  in  Boston 

"  It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  the  story  is  skilfully  and  picturesquely  written, 
portraying  sharply  individual  characters  in  well-defined  surroundings."  — 
New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 

The  Three  Fates 

"  Mr.  Crawford  has  manifestly  brought  his  best  qualities  as  a  student  of 
human  nature  and  his  finest  resources  as  a  master  of  an  original  and 
picturesque  style  to  bear  upon  this  story.  Taken  for  all  in  all,  it  is  one  of 
the  most  pleasing  of  all  his  productions  in  fiction,  and  it  affords  a  view  of 
certain  phases  of  American,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  of  New  York,  life 
that  have  not  hitherto  been  treated  with  anything  like  the  same  adequacy 
and  felicity."  —  Boston  Beacon. 

Marion  Darche 

"  Full  enough  of  incident  to  have  furnished  material  for  three  or  four 
stories.  ...  A  most  interesting  and  engrossing  book.  Every  page  unfolds 
new  possibilities,  and  the  incidents  multiply  rapidly."  —  Detroit  Free  Press. 
"  We  are  disposed  to  rank  Marion  Darche  as  the  best  of  Mr.  Crawford's 
American  stories." —  The  Literary  World. 

Katharine  Lauderdale 

The   Ralstons.     A  Sequel  to  "Katharine  Lauderdale" 

"  Mr.  Crawford  at  his  best  is  a  great  novelist,  and  in  Katharine  Lauderdale 
we  have  him  at  his  best."  —  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 

"  A  most  admirable  novel,  excellent  in  style,  flashing  with  humor,  and  full 
of  the  ripest  and  wisest  reflections  upon  men  and  women."  —  The  West 
minster  Gazette. 

"  It  is  the  first  time,  we  think,  in  American  fiction  that  any  such  breadth  of 
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Via   CrUClS.     A  Romance  of  the  Second  Crusade.      Illustrated 

by  Louis  Loeb 

"  Via  Cruets  ...  A  tale  of  former  days,  possessing  an  air  of  reality  and  an 
absorbing  interest  such  as  few  writers  since  Scott  have  been  able  to  accom 
plish  when  dealing  with  historical  characters."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

In  the  Palace  of  the  King  (Spain) 

"  In  the  Palace  of  the  King  is  a  masterpiece ;  there  is  a  picturesqueness,  a 
sincerity  which  will  catch  all  readers  in  an  agreeable  storm  of  emotion,  and 
even  leave  a  hardened  reviewer  impressed  and  delighted."  —  Literature, 
London. 

With  the  Immortals 

"  The  strange  central  idea  of  the  story  could  have  occurred  only  to  a  writer 
whose  mind  was  very  sensitive  to  the  current  of  modern  thought  and  prog 
ress,  while  its  execution,  the  setting  it  forth  in  proper  literary  clothing, 
could  be  successfully  attempted  only  by  one  whose  active  literary  ability 
should  be  fully  equalled  by  his  power  of  assimilative  knowledge  both  lit 
erary  and  scientific,  and  no  less  by  his  courage  and  capacity  for  hard  work. 
The  book  will  be  found  to  have  a  fascination  entirely  new  for  the  habitual 
reader  of  novels.  Indeed,  Mr.  Crawford  has  succeeded  in  taking  his  read 
ers  quite  above  the  ordinary  plane  of  novel  interest."  —  Boston  Advertiser. 

Children  of  the  King  (Calabria) 

"  One  of  the  most  artistic  and  exquisitely  finished  pieces  of  work  that 
Crawford  has  produced.  The  picturesque  setting,  Calabria  and  its  sur 
roundings,  the  beautiful  Sorrento  and  the  Gulf  of  Salerno,  with  the  bewitch 
ing  accessories  that  climate,  sea,  and  sky  afford,  give  Mr.  Crawford  rich 
opportunities  to  show  his  rare  descriptive  powers.  As  a  whole  the  book  is 
strong  and  beautiful  through  its  simplicity,  and  ranks  among  the  choicest 
of  the  author's  many  fine  productions."  —  Public  Opinion. 

A  Cigarette  Maker's  Romance  (Munich) 

and   Khaled,  a  Tale  of  Arabia 

"  Two  gems  of  subtle  analysis  of  human  passion  and  motive." —  Times. 
"  The  interest  is  unflagging  throughout.  Never  has  Mr.  Crawford  done 
more  brilliant  realistic  work  than  here.  But  his  realism  is  only  the  case 
and  cover  for  those  intense  feelings  which,  placed  under  no  matter  what 
humble  conditions,  produce  the  most  dramatic  and  the  most  tragic  situa 
tions.  .  . .  This  is  a  secret  of  genius,  to  take  the  most  coarse  and  common 
material,  the  meanest  surroundings,  the  most  sordid  material  prospects, 
and  out  of  the  vehement  passions  which  sometimes  dominate  all  human 
beings  to  build  up  with  these  poor  elements,  scenes  and  passages  the 
dramatic  and  emotional  power  of  which  at  once  enforce  attention  and 
awaken  the  profoundest  interest."  —  New  York  Tribune. 


Fair  Margaret.     A  Portrait 


1  An  exhilarating  romance  . .  .  alluring  in  its  naturalness  and  grace."  — 
Boston  Herald. 

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which  the  characters  really  belong  to  the  chosen  scene  and  the  story  inter 
est  is  strong.  His  novels  possess  atmosphere  in  a  high  degree. 

Mr.  Isaacs  (India) 

Its  scenes  are  laid  in  Simla,  chiefly.  This  is  the  work  which  first  placed 
its  author  among  the  most  brilliant  novelists  of  his  day. 

Greifenstein  (The  Black  Forest) 

"...  Another  notable  contribution  to  the  literature  of  the  day.  It  pos 
sesses  originality  in  its  conception  and  is  a  work  of  unusual  ability.  Its 
interest  is  sustained  to  the  close,  and  it  is  an  advance  even  on  the  previous 
work  of  this  talented  author.  Like  all  Mr.  Crawford's  work,  this  novel  is 
crisp,  clear,  and  vigorous,  and  will  be  read  with  a  great  deal  of  interest." — 
New  York  Evening  Telegram. 

Zoroaster  (Persia) 

"  It  is  a  drama  in  the  force  of  its  situations  and  in  the  poetry  and  dignity  of 
its  language;  but  its  men  and  women  are  not  men  and  women  of  a  play. 
By  the  naturalness  of  their  conversation  and  behavior  they  seem  to  live  and 
lay  hold  of  our  human  sympathy  more  than  the  same  characters  on  a  stage 
could  possibly  do." —  The  New  York  Times. 

The  Witch  of  Prague  (Bohemia) 

"A  fantastic  tale?  illustrated  by  IV.  f.  Hennessy. 

"  The  artistic  skill  with  which  this  extraordinary  story  is  constructed  and 
carried  out  is  admirable  and  delightful.  .  .  .  Mr.  Crawford  has  scored  a 
decided  triumph,  for  the  interest  of  the  tale  is  sustained  throughout.  .  .  . 
A  very  remarkable,  powerful,  and  interesting  story."  —  New  York  Tribune. 

Paul   Patoff  (Constantinople) 

"  Mr.  Crawford  has  a  marked  talent  for  assimilating  local  color,  not  to 
make  mention  of  a  broader  historical  sense.  Even  though  he  may  adopt, 
as  it  is  the  romancer's  right  to  do,  the  extreme  romantic  view  of  history,  it  is 
always  a  living  and  moving  picture  that  he  evolves  for  us,  varied  and  stir 
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scored  the  greatest  triumph  of  them  all."  — New  York  Herald, 


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